2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is among the nice motion pictures that doesn’t exist. That’s to say that it’s a film that technically exists (and really carried out nicely on the field workplace) however left such a minor affect on tradition that it’s remarkably simple to neglect it ever occurred.

The truth that it was the third entry in an in any other case beloved sequence that deserted almost every little thing about its predecessors makes it that rather more obscure. Brendan Fraser returned, however Rachel Weisz didn’t. Weisz was changed with Maria Bello, who primarily performs a completely totally different model of the identical character. Behind the scenes, the film misplaced director and screenwriter Stephen Sommers in addition to a number of legacy crew members. What we have been left with was an odd story involving the legendary origins of the Terracotta Military that made little use of the franchise’s highlights and even much less use of doubtless unimaginable newcomers Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. It was simply… weird.

Nicely, the excellent news is that we lately realized {that a} fourth Mummy film is reportedly in improvement. Whereas the small print of that film (together with Rachel Weisz’s rumored return) haven’t been formally confirmed but, Brendan Fraser has been speaking round it fairly a bit throughout a press tour for his new film Rental Household. In an interview with the Related Press, Fraser stated it’s “time to present the followers what they need” and famous that “the [Mummy movie] I wished to make is forthcoming.” Apparently, he additionally provided some perception on why the third Mummy film turned out the way in which it did.

“The third one was a mannequin of … how can I say this to the AP reporter? NBC had the rights to broadcast the Olympics that yr,” Fraser explains. “So that they put two collectively and we went to China. Working in Shanghai, an unimaginable expertise. I’m pleased with the third one as a result of I believe it’s an excellent standalone film. We picked up and did what we do with a special crew on deck and gave it our greatest shot.”

Fraser’s perception concerning the timing of the 2008 Summer season Olympics in Beijing does assist put that film’s considerably cursed manufacturing in a brand new gentle. NBC and Common Footage (the studio behind the Fraser-led Mummy movies) mixed their belongings in 2004. Not lengthy after that, a script set for a 3rd Mummy film set in China began to make the rounds. Fraser is seemingly suggesting that NBCUniversal noticed that concept as a tie-in to the much-anticipated Beijing Olympics that would play nicely within the Chinese language movie market and let that fringe advantages of that angle be the driving drive behind the venture.

For what it’s price, the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor script shortly gained notoriety within the trades for being fairly unhealthy. Reportedly, an earlier model of that script included fairly a bit of fabric that by no means made its means into the ultimate movie, together with quite a few callbacks to the primary two motion pictures. It’s doable that Weisz’s choice to go away the film (which she later attributed to scheduling issues quite than her reported points with the script) resulted in a few of these adjustments. Nevertheless, given that there have been reportedly quite a few alterations made to the script that took it fairly removed from its unique type and into troubled manufacturing territory pretty early on (to not point out the standard of the movie itself), the concept that NBCUniversal was dedicated to seeing the venture by way of for different causes begins to make sense.

The disgrace of all of it is that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor actually did have the potential to be one thing higher. The aforementioned additions of Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh ought to have been nice, and the choice to make use of the franchise as a car for different mythologies had numerous potential. In the end, although, it looks as if the wheels fell off the film fairly shortly and the studio dragged it throughout the end line, partially attributable to company synergy and ulterior advantages. Right here’s hoping that rumoured fourth movie makes the third entry really feel like much more of a blip.