Do plans for a new Mummy movie mark the end of the multiverse? | film

TThe news this week that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz will be back in a new Mummy movie for the first time in a quarter century feels like Hollywood stumbling out of a very long house party that you don’t quite remember attending. The last time the pair appeared together was in 2001, when The Mummy Returns (itself an uninteresting sequel to the much better 1999 film The Mummy) became a hit. Since then, we’ve gotten a spinoff (2002’s The Scorpion King, which featured an early turn from Dwayne Johnson) and a second sequel that didn’t include Weisz, 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

And then, of course, there was the ominous “Dark Universe,” forever immortalized by that imposing publicity photo of Russell Crowe (Dr. Jekyll), Javier Bardem (Frankenstein’s Monster), Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp (The Invisible Man) staring into the middle distance like an aging goth group. The plan was to launch an interconnected saga in which Jekyll would serve as a kind of Nick Fury monster movie, trapping Dracula, Frankenstein, and various undead origins in a synergistic Marvel-style cinematic ecosystem. Fortunately, it collapsed quickly: the 2017 cruise-piloted mummy landed with all the grace of a cursed coffin that had fallen into the lift shaft. And that, as far as the Dark Universe was concerned, it was. Universal focused on smaller films like Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, while Bardem’s Monster and Depp’s Invisible Man never materialized.

Now it seems the studio has returned to the pre-2000s era, where films often featured a clear, linear story, sometimes having a beginning, middle, and end. In the absence of any further clear plans for The Mummy, you can’t really blame him. Fraser is in the middle of his career again behind Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, and Weisz has never been absent. If the original Fraser-Weisz-era Mummy filled the gap left by Steven Spielberg’s refusal to make any more Indiana Jones movies, this belated sequel has the advantage of debuting when the last series seemed dead and buried after the lukewarm response to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Is the era of cinematic universes as a whole coming to an end now? Sony’s Spider-Man-with-Spider-Man experience has begun quietly. The Flash seemed more like a triumphant leap into the multiverse than DC continuity collapsing in on itself. And although Marvel Studios is barely readying the Infinity Stones yet, there are persistent whispers that the next two Avengers films – Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars – could serve as a proper reset for the narrative.

However, the truth is that audiences don’t hate cinematic universes as much as they resent it when studios announce big multiverse epics before anyone has even seen the credits for the first one. When Marvel brought out Iron Man in 2008, there were already plans to team up Tony Stark with Captain America and Thor in the Avengers films, but the studio made sure all of those entries worked before trying to merge them together. The best part is that two decades later, the studio is facing dwindling box office returns and (arguably) multiverse fatigue after trying too hard to turn casual viewers into reluctant archivists.

Perhaps that’s why the prospect of a new mummy movie seems a bit drastic. There’s no extended call-out to the monsters, no roadmap presentation disguised as narrative, and no official announcement of Dr. Jekyll’s return in the tomb of shared continuity. Just a fast-paced, engaging adventure, where attractive people run into danger, trade barbs and solve the central problem. In 1999, this was simply called a “blockbuster.” In 2026 it may qualify as specialized programming.

Perhaps this is the lesson of Universal’s strategic retreat. Audiences have not so much revolted against cohesive storytelling as tired of being conscripted into it. Connective tissue becomes the point. Scaffolding overwhelmed the structure. What started as an occasional thrill — a show here, a crossover there — slowly turned into homework. By contrast, the Fraser-Wise reunion promises something almost unfashionable: narrative closure. If it succeeds, it will not be because it revives an old property, but because it revives an idea that was unfashionable until recently, that a story can simply end.