LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY/THE MUMMY 4
Tackling this property for the first bet is a safe one but to put a little more meat on the bones, I will also be making my predictions for the recently announced 2028 project. The Measure values I give here are based on “the mummy” as modern IP. Unlike most monsters with folklore that exceeds their cinematic presentation, “the mummy” is in a strange place for Millennials and our successors. This will prove a fascinating test of my perspective! Head to The Archives and review my Salvage Report for Tom Cruise’s Dark Universe attempt and why it failed to understand the gravity of the story’s cultural legacy.
PROTOCOL: MM_analysis_themummyMOD //
VERIFIED: 04_23_2026 //
THE MUMMY [modern]
CANON MUTABILITY - 2
Its original folklore counterpart has a fairly linear storyline: you disturb the mummy, you get cursed, and either return what you stole or pay for your crimes. The Fraser-verse has since overtaken The Mummy storyline, giving us a solid canon that audiences punished that franchise for betraying before.
LORE GRAVITY - 4
Strangely for such a high LG score, my take here is that it’s the fandom and the 50-and-under crowd’s memory of the modern classic pulling people in. Far removed from Tutankhamun and Abbott & Costello’s escapades but echoing them perfectly, the “bisexual panic” and birth of a feminist model for male action heroes in Fraser’s ‘Rick O’Connell’ are just as essential to the property’s place in cultural memory as anything having to do with Egypt.
AFFECTIVE SIGNATURE - 4
Much of why the later sequels in the Fraser-verse fell apart comes from viewing the affective signature strictly through the genre lens. It was a fun action adventure, but with only as much threat as George of the Jungle presented. Maybe more visceral and horror oriented, but never with the ticking clock being the motivation. Mystery and an Indiana Jones sense of adventure are essential for this property, even in its pre-modern forms.
ARTIFACT AWARENESS - 4
I struggled with this one and I still do. Half of me thinks higher, half of me thinks lower. Whichever way I go with it,
ARTIFACT VALENCE - 3
While mummies might be some of the most famous forces from Egyptian mythology to come (back) to life on the Silver Screen, its more modern iteration belongs somewhere between Saturday morning cartoon character or a gag character on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. People are likely to link both the Fraser-verse and a vague retelling of the curse on archeologists, but it’s hard to say the property has cultural momentum, especially after the 2017 flop.
MEDIUM TETHERING - 2
This is one of those underutilized IP titles. Studios know their biggest ROI is in more movies or maybe a solid series and they’re right. But I still think they’re leaving money on the table with this property: it begs to live in games! Maybe not a “play the movie!” 00’s style game, but a Clue-style adventure-mystery with original characters who mirror the main roles of the show? You could make a tabletop. Even a Magic the Gathering set a few months before the new movie comes out would be welcome (and fit nearly into the color system now that I think about it…)
LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY
PREDICTION
Modest domestic and international appeal, potential value as a streaming relic
RESONANCE RATE
40% - 50%
Most people who watch it won’t hate it but they won’t love it either
COOPER COEFFICIENT
.10
Misalignment on Artifact Valence and Affective Profile
Here’s my thinking on the .10 coefficient score: it’s ok to go dark with this. I love horror as a genre across mediums but I don’t think there’s a massive demand for a revival of this property as something genuinely scary. I haven’t seen the movie [released April 17th, last Friday of this posting] and most of the marketing I’ve seen leading up to it was confusing. The big mummy gimmick had to compete against headlines forecasting WWIII. It might have played out with more fanfare if things weren’t so intense already. The producers couldn’t have known we’d be at war when they set out to develop this project, but I am curious about an April release. Timing, it seems, is the big issue with this film.
Even in a dull news cycle, a spring horror film feels wrong. I know life in LA is essentially seasonless, but for most of the US (and the global English-speaking movie market) it’s still cold and wet. Winter has barely left, the Sun is only just starting to get Vitamin D back up, and Warner Bros thought now was when people were looking for a scare? More realistically, they made the call to keep a flop from being big news.Slating this for the summer risks triggering the action-adventure affective memory which will disappoint fans and aiming for horror season (fall) would pit it against the big budget flicks of the year. I respect the decision but there’s no denying the release schedule hurt the potential reach of this film.
Most of my predictions going forward will be before something releases, so the bigger focus on my question here isn’t whether or not this movie will “succeed” in a monetary sense. It’s a small project and already made back its budget on opening weekend. That’s a big success and for horror fans, any evidence of success for the big studios is great news! I don’t think WB was really worried: the director has already proven himself in the genre and the bar was low enough ($22M) that even a middling reaction would keep the project in the black. I’m more focused on how this will play out as it moves from its mixed-review release onto streaming platforms.
The biggest reason my score is so low here is the mismatch in marketing and the film’s actual tone. It was sold as “look, it’s scary again!” but early responses from audiences point out the story isn’t much of anything at all. Wes at Atomic Cult Media wrote on opening night:
"Stripping away the swashbuckling DNA of the 90s and the blockbuster gloss of the 2010s, this Blumhouse and Atomic Monster collaboration feels more like a spiritual successor to Evil Dead Rise than a Universal Classic. Cronin trades archaeology for a parasitic nightmare, proving you can remove the demon, but you can’t remove the trauma."
In my opinion, this was a chance for Cronin to prove to executives that he’s more than a one-trick pony. It seems like audiences expected him to go that route too. Remaining true to your origins (literally following the Rami Route) is the mark of a director’s voice but my original skepticism and early reactions seem to confirm Cronin didn’t take that leap. I, like many others I suspect, will watch this movie. Just not until it’s streaming in a few months when I’m in the mood for big jump scares and tomb raiding adventures.
TERRAFORMATION PREDICTION: ‘Cult’ success on streaming, middling success overall, does not get a sequel or shift the atmosphere
The cinematic run will continue with mismatched affective expectations. Fans who know the director’s name will walk away happy but everyone else in the theater right now is either a high-consumption viewer or a general horror fan. This won’t interact with new audiences until it hits streaming platforms and by then, I think WB will have learned their lesson and refined the marketing/categorization to catch the sweet spot of thrill seeking adventure fans and slasher flick fanatics.
tHE MUMMY 4 (2028)
PREDICTION
Either a welcome return to the franchise’s origins or a disappointing wash that makes a small profit but disappears into Fraser’s filmography.
RESONANCE RATE
ROUTE A: 40% - 50% | ROUTE B: 60-70%
The difference between a disappointing nail in the coffin for this franchise and a perfect sunset to revive the value of a 4-film collection.
COOPER COEFFICIENT
ROUTE A: -.60 | ROUTE B: .90
Directors (Radio Silence) have proven themselves masters of IP development but haven’t proven their willingness to tell a story with a happy ending and family-fun appeal.
There isn’t much announced about this project yet. It’s slated for a 2028 release with Fraser and Weisz both returning with more mature versions of their characters. Aside from that, there isn’t much to say. I’ll revisit this prediction once we get more information but the one tidbit we do have gives plenty of fodder for reasoned speculation. The directors are the duo Radio Silence and have already proven themselves capable pilots of fan-favorite franchises. They revived Scream in 2022 and took on Ready or Not, bringing a fairly successful sequel to what most expected would be a standalone movie. There’s good reason to believe the right people are piloting Universal’s ship.
That said, I think we’ll see one of two things out of these directors: they try and make it their own or they prove themselves to be the best IP pilots in the game right now. Let’s imagine the worst case scenario where they go rogue and try to return to their V/H/S roots.
Their earliest projects made effective use of limited budgets and played with the meta framework of the genre. The capitalized on the Paranormal Activity found footage boom by playing with its structure in V/H/S then proved they could deliver on the genre itself with Devil’s Due. Were these particularly great films? Not in my opinion. They did find audiences and more importantly, they mastered the craft of putting the audience in the protagonist’s position. Once Samara Weaving reverse scream-queened the duo into cinematic history, they leaned into female-led power fantasies set in horror worlds. These guys understand the horror zeitgeist and know exactly how to tap into it while giving more general audiences a clear “in” to their projects.
They masterfully took situations from life and built films around them: the hostility between in-laws can feel like a game of cat-and-mouse with life-or-death consequences; babysitting is a terrifying change of trust bringing strangers into strangers’ most intimate spaces and dynamics; you never know what you’ll find in an old box in the garage. When the last decade of horror films has been extended metaphors for grief or painfully self-aware meta criticisms, the authentic excitement of a slasher flick mixed with just enough metaphorical meta to satisfy audiences is their winning formula. It will continue to serve them well. Here’s where my praise ends on this project – they can’t do it their way. At least not fully.
ROUTE A: MASTERY OF STYLE
The biggest challenge for the duo will be managing Rick. Rick is the hero. This is a hero’s journey narrative. My greatest fear is that they’re going to play into the aging metaphor. We get hints of it in what little has been released: ‘mature’ can mean a whole lot. It’s honestly not a bad movie plot:
Rick and Evelyn saved the world but their last few decades have mostly involved saving school projects and attending domestic social events. Rick is frustrated at a garden party with their in-laws. Their son has married happily but Rick struggles with the middle-class English lifestyle. Evie serves as the social face of the family and has come to resent Rick’s attachment to the past. She’s grown, their son has grown, but Rick’s still rooting around for something. That something shows up in a mysterious box left on their porch, containing a piece of stolen treasure. The O’Connells won’t have to chase after Imhotep this time; someone’s sent him after them.
Honestly, I’d watch it. I bet a lot of people would. Let’s pretend they somehow read this and write that plot. Awesome, thanks fellas, I am available for screenwriting gigs. It could either be a fantastic film that taps into the nostalgia factor while giving it a clear modern voice or it devolves into a gritty, atmospheric horror that plays on age and a fading sense of relevance. Here’s the awful version of how my treatment pitch plays out:
Evie dismisses Rick’s concerns as him seeking adventure (we’ve seen this play out before) and Rick waits for men to burst through the windows. He jumps up in the night and it’s just the cat. Weeks pass, a montage of parties go by with Rick hopeful they’ll be torn apart by black-robed enemies or mystical monsters. He’s mostly besieged by handshakes and uncomfortable questions about America. Jonathan tries to cheer Rick up, takes him out, and the old man forgets his limits. Unable to keep up with the lifelong bachelor, the horror story Rick’s been waiting for begins. Drunk and alone, the world around Rick starts the blur into a Lovecraftian nightmare, with jump scares and blurry action sequences to immerse the audience in his last night of terror.
At this point, I could go on to imagine an ending but I already hate the story I’m shaping.
This would be a fantastic movie plot but it doesn’t belong in this specific IP. Unfortunately, given Fraser’s more recent efforts to play dramatic, contemplative roles (The Whale) and the pressure on established directors to break their own typecasting, it isn’t an unimaginable scenario. Anything that’s blue shaded, dimly lit, and relying on pin-drop audioscapes will bomb. This cannot be slow, it cannot be a meditation on mortality, and it cannot slow itself down. A single night of madness has been Radio Silence’s artistic signature but they need to show they’ve grown past their original formula. Nailing The Mummy 4 while maintaining a clear sense of their aesthetic is how they go from Tarantino to the Coen Brothers. It’s one thing to be a master of your style but another to be masters of the art itself.
ROUTE B: MASTERY OF THE STYLE
They can prove they’re at that level with a ‘truer to its roots’ take on this. Here’s what I think should happen from our original pitch:
Rick and Evelyn saved the world but their last few decades have mostly involved saving school projects and attending domestic social events. Rick is frustrated at a garden party with their in-laws. Their son has married happily but Rick struggles with the middle-class English lifestyle. Evie serves as the social face of the family and has come to resent Rick’s attachment to the past. She’s grown, their son has grown, but Rick’s still rooting around for something. That something shows up in a mysterious box left on their porch, containing a piece of stolen treasure. The O’Connells won’t have to chase after Imhotep this time; someone’s sent him after them…
Rick’s phone rings with an unknown number. He silences it only for it to ring again, urgently buzzing. He steps away to answer to hear a familiar friend’s exhausted, breathless warning, “They’re coming!” The Medjai’s warning comes too late as the party is suddenly besieged by mummified soldiers. Expecting everyone to fall into a mad panic, Rick rushes to play the hero but finds himself too late. While he was away taking the call, the commotion had already kicked off. Granddad had gone in, gotten his old rifle from the war, and starts downing zombies with a quip about still having his aim from the war. Suddenly realizing Rick has more in common with his new family than he thought.
The plot goes along a happier version of Ready or Not with two families coming together to put to rest an old curse threatening a happy future for the new couple and their baby on the way. Something where maybe they need the baby to bring Imhotep back or whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is cheesy action sequences, satisfying metaphors, and a happy ending. It must be happy. There is no room for an ambiguous or god-forbid dark ending here. This is nostalgic dopamine + mid-life metaphor for the Millennials who fell in love with this as kids. You take the modern expectations for these kinds of films that Radio Silence themselves established and you’re able to appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Older audiences who remember the movie fondly will show up and with the right marketing, you can get horror fans with families and action-adventure fans braving a genre-bend in theater seats. It has massive potential!
TERRAFORMATION PREDICTION
ROUTE A OUTCOME Opening weekend hit but a critical failure and hard-to-sell streaming relic that proves the death of this IP and Fraser’s draw as a lead.
ROUTE BE OUTCOME Opening weekend hit that performs well internationally, especially in Latin America, China, and the UK (family-oriented dramas). Fits neatly into streaming catalogs and makes purchasing the series’ rights worthwhile going forward. It’s now spanning decades instead of a decades’ old property that ended on a sour note.
