Halfway through Steven Soderbergh;’s The Limey (’99) the late Nicky Katt muses about TV fare. “Why don’t they make shows about people’s daily lives?,” he asks. “Shows you’d be interested in watching, y’know? Sick Old Man or Skinny Little Weakling. Big Fat Guy…wouldn’t you watch a show called Big Fat Guy? I’d watch that fucking show.”
Yesterday Variety ran a piece about Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss being officially cast as Rick and Evelyn O’Connell for a fourth installment of Univeral’s profitable Mummy franchise. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, pic will presumably shoot later this year or sometime in ’27. It will open on 5.19.28.
My first reaction was that the 57-year-old Fraser is too old and fat to play a studly adventurer in a dumb horror pic, and that he wouldn’t be believable as a tough guy anyway because he whined too much about former HFPA president Phillip Berk touching his butt cheeks back in ’03.
Then it hit me…a brainwave. If Universal were to call the film in question Fat Mummy, I would run to the nearest plex when it opens. Imagine it! A mummy with a weight problem. The script would write itself. Like Snakes on a Plane, Fat Mummy is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle titles that everyone (and I mean everyone) would pay to see theatrically or rent or stream or whatever…instant mayhem.
