John Hannah Will Return in ‘The Mummy 4’ Alongside Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz

The Mummy 4 is shaping up to be a family reunion, as another member of the O’Connell/Carnahan family returns to the franchise. Universal Pictures’ The Mummy 4 is looking to be one of the most highly anticipated legacy sequels, returning stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz to the franchise as Rick O’Connell and Evelyn Carahan, later O’Connell. Since the two Academy Award-winning actors were confirmed to return, many have wondered if franchise staples like Arnold Vosloo, Patricia Velásquez, or Oded Fehr would also return.

The Hollywood Reporter confirms that actor John Hannah will return as Jonathan Carnahan in The Mummy 4. Introduced in The Mummy, John Hannah is Evelyn’s older brother and an adept thief. Hannah reprised his role in both 2001’s The Mummy Returns and 2028’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Hannah’s other notable credits include films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sliding Doors, and The Hurricane, as well as television series such as Spartacus and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Mummy 4 will be directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, replacing Stephen Summers, who directed the first two films in the franchise. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, better known as Radio Silence, are no strangers to horror, having directed Ready or Not and its sequel, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, as well as 2022’s Scream, Scream VI, and Abigail. David Coggeshall, writer of Orphan: First Kill, is signed on to write The Mummy 4. While details about The Mummy 4 are under wraps, the directors have hinted that the film will ignore the events of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor because that film recast Rachel Weisz with Maria Bello.

Universal Pictures has set The Mummy 4 to open in theaters on May 19, 2028, 29 years from the release of Fraser and Weisz’s first film in The Mummy franchise. It will also mark 20 years since the release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the last time Fraser played Rick O’Connell. The news of John Hannah’s return for The Mummy 4 coincided with Universal Pictures’ 25th-anniversary re-release of The Mummy Returns in theaters.

Universal Pictures abandoned its popular Mummy film series in the early 2010s, opting to reboot it for a new film that would launch a hypothetical shared universe. That film ultimately turned out to be 2017’s The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Alex Kurtzman, and was originally intended to launch The Dark Universe, a shared continuity of Universal Monster movies that had more in common with action films. 2017’s The Mummy bombed with critics and audiences.

Universal Pictures has since scrapped any shared-universe plans and approached the Universal Monsters as standalone stories. This has resulted in dramatic reimaginings of classic monsters like The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man from Blumhouse, two unique Dracula stories in 2023 with Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and now a legacy sequel to The Mummy. With a generation of nostalgic goodwill for the first two Mummy films, and both Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz having since won Academy Awards after joining the action-horror franchise, The Mummy 4 is shaping up to be a highly anticipated film.

Release Date

May 19, 2028

Director

Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

Writers

David Coggeshall

Producers

James Vanderbilt, Paul Neinstein, Sean Daniel, William Sherak