Days before I could ask John Hannah if there was anything he could share about The Mummy 4, he had been instructed to keep shtum.
‘I got an email telling me what I couldn’t say, which is kind of a shame,’ the 64-year-old told Metro. Presumably, Universal Pictures wanted to avoid any spoilers popping out while he promoted Benidorm is Murder.
The film hasn’t been shot yet, but anticipation is already high. The 2027 instalment in the ancient Egyptian-themed franchise will get the core gang back together again, reuniting Hannah with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.
The latest casting news added Kevin J O’Connor and Oded Fehr, who played scamming scaredy-cat Beni and Medjai chieftain Ardeth Bay, respectively.
Michael Johnston, the star of this summer’s smash Obsession, is also officially on the call sheet for the mummification movie, albeit with no details on his role yet.
The plot is also under the thickest of wraps, but Hannah had naturally read the script and had some things to share.
He promised fans ‘it’s going to be good’, after what was a thoroughly mixed reception to the 2008 threequel, which recast Weisz’s character and took us to China to battle a new, decidedly less campy mummy.
‘It’s an age-appropriate sequel, kind of to the first Mummy film,’ he said, referring to the 20s-set 1999 film, in which Rick (Fraser) and Evy (Weisz) meet and fall in love, all while fighting off a reanimated mummy.
We don’t yet know if Arnold Vosloo and Patricia Velásquez, who played awakened Imhotep and his long-lost love Anck-es-en-Amon, will be reprising their roles.
Are you excited for The Mummy 4?
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Yes, I’m so down for it to be resurrected
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No, they should have left it buried
He went on: ‘So that’s the cast they put together: Rachel, Brendan, myself. They’ve kind of gone back to the first one.’
Hannah plays the money-grubbing brother of Weisz’s intellectual librarian, Jonathan, often found trailing in the wake of the heroic lovers and scoping out avenues to make a quick buck. He’s very good fun to watch.
‘Unfortunately, my character hasn’t really evolved in any way,’ laughed Hannah.
Perhaps because the lacklustre third film had the whiff of a cash grab to it, he was keen to stress that is not the case in this instance.
‘It would be very easy to be cynical about this and go, all right, they’re making it because there’s an audience there and they can make some money and blah blah blah,’ he said.
‘But the script is really good. It’s really funny and loads of s*** happens.’
The Mummy 4 will be released in theatres on October 15, 2027.