Here's the Most Exciting Sequel Announcement of 2025

Sequel announcements typically don’t elicit much more than a shrug these days. If a movie succeeds, a sequel seems inevitable. If it flops, it’s unlikely. There haven’t been many exciting or unpredictable sequel announcements this year. They’re making a sequel to the most successful box office hit of 2024, Super Mario Bros. James Gunn announced another Superman movie, Man of Tomorrow. There will be yet another Lord of the Rings film, The Hunt for Gollum. Officially, there will be a second Robert Pattinson Batman film and a third Dune film, both featuring Pattinson.

The closest thing to a genuine surprise sequel announcement this year is a second The Simpsons movie, set to hit theaters 20 years after the first. Meanwhile, news of a sequel to Godzilla Minus One wasn’t shocking, but it was at least exciting.

But this announcement? It elicited an actual squee! in our Slack. I haven’t seen a squee! in at least a decade.

And here it is: Brendan Fraser - whose career comeback began three years ago with The Whale - is reportedly in talks with Rachel Weisz to reprise their characters for a sequel to The Mummy. Better still, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett—the duo behind Ready or Not and the Scream revival (not to mention Abigail and the forthcoming Ready or Not 2) - will reportedly direct the film.

That’s both surprising and exciting. 1999’s The Mummy and 2001’s The Mummy Returns (featuring Dwayne Johnson early in his acting career) weren’t what I’d call good movies, but they were beloved. Tom Cruise’s 2017 The Mummy? Not beloved. And if you’re going back to the well, you may as well bring back the actors who made the beloved ones work in the first place.

Sequels arriving 20 or more years after their predecessors have a mixed track record. You’ve got true successes like Top Gun: Maverick, mixed bags like Blade Runner 2049 and Gladiator II, and the ones no one asked for: Dumb and Dumber To and Independence Day: Resurgence, which I’d completely forgotten existed until just now. My guess is that a third The Mummy movie starring Fraser and Weisz will at least fare as well as the second Gladiator movie.

Plot details are nonexistent, and there’s no release date yet to put on your calendars. But a squee is appropriate.