You don't need to be an explorer or an adventurer or a treasure-seeker or a gunfighter to appreciate the charms of The Mummy.
The 1999 film starring Brendan Fraser at his swashbuckling best came out 25 years ago and has yet to gather dust, subsequent generations happily discovering the same humor, thrills and crackling chemistry between the actor and costar Rachel Weisz that originally dazzled theatergoers.
"I loved being part of a movie that we didn't know if it was an action, comedy, horror, adventure, romance—all of the above," Fraser told Popverse in 2022. "I think it had so much appeal because everybody wanted a little bit of all of those things I just mentioned. And by whatever movie magic, it came together for us."
The Oscar winner also starred in 2001's The Mummy Returns and 2008's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and has said he's open to reprising the role of charming rogue Rick O'Connell, "if someone came up with the right conceit." (And he knows what the wrong conceit looks like, pointing to the unfortunate 2017 effort to revive the IP starring Tom Cruise.)
But even if Rick and Evelyn had only awakened one undead prince with an axe to grind, Fraser's place in cinematic history would've still been set in stone. Not to mention, there's enough lore behind the original film to fill a precariously stacked library.
So though you should probably stay away from anything titled "Book of the Dead," no harm ever came from reading these tightly wrapped secrets about The Mummy:
IP Origin Story
Though a lot of younger theatergoers may have never seen anything like it, 1999's The Mummy took its source material from the 1932 Universal film of the same name written by John L. Balderston, Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer and starring Boris Karloff as Imhotep, as well as the properly named David Manners as accidental adventurer Frank Whemple.
Before heading to Hollywood, where he got his start adapting Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the big screen, Balderston was a foreign correspondent who was in Egypt to witness the unsealing of King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1923.
Adventurous Souls
The 1999 film, written and directed by Stephen Sommers, "has many of the same names and situations and the same exotic allure," star Brendan Fraser told the Los Angeles Times ahead of its release, "but all brought up to speed with special effects."
But he didn't really know which genre The Mummy belonged to when he signed up.
"Is it a comedy? Is it an action picture? Is it an adventure?" Fraser reflected to GQ. "All of it, none of it—I can still hear [costar Rachel Weisz] going, 'Oh no, they're going to confiscate our equity cards.'"
Classic Hollywood
Like seemingly every surefire-hit-in-hindsight ever made, it took years to reawaken The Mummy.
"After the [1992 Francis Ford Coppola] Dracula and [Kenneth Branagh's 1994] Frankenstein, The Mummy was the last Universal monster the studio could do a remake of," producer James Jacks told the LA Times. There had been several lackluster sequels to the 1932 film, none featuring Karloff, and then a 1959 remake with Christopher Lee as the titular monster.
Jacks and producing partner Sean Daniel also went through multiple iterations that had "arguments for each of them—and arguments against."
The screenplay they settled on—cranked out by Sommers in six weeks in 1997—was "the most expensive version" (con) but also "the biggest movie" for Universal to market as a potential blockbuster (pro).
On One Condition
Universal dictated from the beginning that the film had to be rated PG-13 as a condition of the studio's investment.
"I think we're going for the 13," visual effects supervisor John Berton told the LA Times of the "scary, not gross" special effects his team crafted.
Grand Company
Many of the ancient exteriors were shot in the Ouarzazate province of Morocco, which has provided settings for numerous other epic productions, including Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Game of Thrones.
Most interiors, including the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, where the bookish Evelyn works as a librarian, were sets built at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England.
Place of Worship
Fraser spoke with reverence about the elaborate sets that took 15 weeks to build atop a dormant volcano.
"It was a brilliant set made so that it could fall apart," he told journalist Bobbie Wygand in 1999. "The ancient city of Hamunaptra [known as The City of the Dead] was designed by Pharoah Seti I, because he was no fool, he could flip a switch and all of his treasure would sink back into the sand."
Nodding to the $80 million budget, had added, "No expense was spared in creating the world of the past and the one that we find in the very romantic period of the 1920s and '30s."
Hot Cursed Buns
The temperature hovered around 130 degrees where they filmed in the Moroccan desert, and there were sandstorms and "creepy crawly things under rocks," Fraser shared. "But that's why we were there. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it."
Her Hero
Evelyn may not have thought much of Rick at first, but Weisz felt secure doing stunts with Fraser from the start.
"I think Brendan is incredibly strong," she told Entertainment Tonight on set. "So I just have to hold his hand and I feel very safe…I trust him."
Weisz also said her leading man was easy to work with, "really instinctive, very funny. He's got a huge range as an actor."
She Just Plays a Librarian in the Movies
Weisz bought a bunch of books on Egyptology to prepare for playing a brainy librarian, she told ET, including one called How to Decipher Hieroglyphics, "which I've never opened, to be honest with you."
Brevity Is the Soul of Wit
Looking back in 2024, Weisz said she thought the funniest line she's ever had in any movie was the "Oops" Evelyn utters after she accidentally sends the shelves in the library crashing to the ground like dominos.
"Lucky we did get it in one take," Weisz told Newsweek. "We had some brilliant technicians [and] my ladder seemed pretty safe."
A 360-degree camera rig was used to get the tricky shot in one continuous take.
Great Scot
John Hannah said he wasn't thought of as a particularly funny actor closer to home, not even after being cast as Evelyn's ne'er-do-well brother Jonathan, who sets the action in motion by presenting his sister with the (um, stolen) map to Hamunaptra.
"In this country the kind of scripts I get sent are those little detectivey, doctory, what's going on in your life kind of thing," he told The Scotsman in 2007. "I never get sent anything left field like this, you know? I suppose Sliding Doors was quite funny, but I'd done that before The Mummy."
But Sommers believed in him and told him to go for it.
"I remember Steve talking about how big the screen was, how big the canvas was," Hannah explained. "You can't do small, little introverted acting. We tend to think you have to do nothing, but it's hard to do nothing when there's an avalanche chasing you!"
The Man With the Plan
Fraser called his experience on the movie "thrilling," not least due to Sommers.
"It had a little bit of, not danger per se, but some risk-taking to it also that felt like, well what will happen today? Will we survive?" he recalled to GQ. "Stephen Sommers, one of his favorite directions that he would give was, he’d go, 'Ready, and...don't suck! Action!' through a bullhorn. And we'd be like, 'Ahh,' and things would blow up and stuff would fall down... 'OK, we got it. Let’s do it again, we're here!' Stephen just loves making movies. He loved his job, his enthusiasm’s infectious."
Surprise!
Speaking of thrilling, those were real rats scurrying over Weisz while she was manacled to the altar.
"It wasn't in the script, actually, the rats," she told Wygand of the chilling scene. "It was an invention by Steve on that day."
She really tried not to freak out, "though I am frightened of rats," she said. "I think most people are. But they were tame rats."
Monster Mash
Arnold Vosloo, who plays the suddenly undead Imhotep, took a sympathetic approach to the titular Mummy.
"I saw this as a grand opportunity to play not one of the seminal monsters, but one of the great romantic figures," the South African actor told the LA Times in 1999. "And when I went in to meet with the producers and Steve Sommers, I was adamant about playing a man in love. Nothing existed except himself and her."
As in, the princess he lost 3,000 years ago and will stop at nothing to be reunited with.
The Real-Ish Deal
The production enlisted UC Santa Barbara-based Egyptologist Dr. Stuart Smith to devise the ancient Egyptian dialect heard in the film.
Over the Hump
The cast spent two weeks learning to ride camels and Fraser said he "got on pretty well" with his designated animal. But, he added, Kevin J. O'Connor, who played the duplicitous Beni Gabor, and his camel "despised each other."
And while camels aren't known for being the friendliest animals, Fraser thought they were unfairly maligned.
"Sure, they're opinionated," he told Wygand, "maybe they're a bit smelly. But if you let 'em know who the boss is, then generally you'll get to go where you want to go."
A Real Bummer
Weisz explained that the secret to riding a camel was leaning backward.
"You feel insecure so you kind of hunch forward," the English actress told ET. "The thing is you have to lean right back and just move with the camel, or else otherwise you will fall off. Horses have a graceful stride. Camels are just kind of, like, all over the place."
But riding one was also pretty uncomfortable, Weisz acknowledged, adding, "You get real sores—on your butt, as you call it in America."
Just in Case
"We had kidnapping insurance taken out on us," Fraser marveled during a 2023 Popverse panel at Emerald City Comic-Con with costar Oded Fehr, who played Medjai chief Ardeth Bay.
Fraser said their producer Jacks, who passed away in 2014, assured him he'd taken out $1 million policies on him and Weisz—"25 [thousand] to 35 on me," Fehr quipped—leaving Kevin O'Connor to ask, "How much did you take out on me?'"
Fraser recalled Jacks replying with a shrug, "Eh, 250."
Fehr said he couldn't remember whether it happened on the set of the original or 2001's The Mummy Returns, but at one point military helicopters showed up to rescue them from a flash flood after a storm.
No Man's Land
Fraser was in the car one night, he recalled, when his driver pointed to the horizon and advised him, "'You see that mountain range over there? If you go past that mountain range, you never come back.'"
Aisle-Bound
Fraser had a little extra incentive to make it home safely from the perilous shoot: His wedding day with fiancée Afton Smith awaited.
They tied the knot Sept. 27, 1998—while The Mummy was in post-production—and went on to have sons Griffin, Holden and Leland together before divorcing in 2009.
Yeah, Loosen the Knot and Let Me Go
Rick and Evelyn escape certain death countless times, but The Mummy almost killed Fraser.
During the Egyptian guards' failed attempt to hang Rick, he was standing on his toes with the rope wrapped around his neck. The director ran over and asked Fraser if he could try to make the choking more believable, the Oscar winner recalled on The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2023. "And I was like, 'All right, fine.' So I thought, 'One more take, man.'"
But instead of leaving it to Fraser's acting skills, whoever was holding the rope pulled tighter.
"I was stuck on my toes—I had nowhere to go but down," he said. "And so he was pulling up and I was going down, and the next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, there was gravel in my teeth, and everyone was really quiet."
Jumping in Headfirst
"I always loved working from a physical standpoint forward," Fraser told IMDb, reflecting on the storied action hero portion of his career.
"As a child, games for me when I played were teaching myself to do judo flips, although I had no idea what I was doing. That was me! But that sense of play never left me those earlier years of my career. The secret is, it's a lot of fun."
Feeling Like an Ancient Artifact
But by the time then-38-year-old Fraser was on the set of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2007, it was his bones that needed a little extra TLC.
"Every morning I was putting myself together like a gladiator with muscle tape and ice packs," he told The Telegraph in 2023, "strapping on this Transformer-like exoskeleton just to get through the scene."
The 6-foot-2 actor eventually underwent a laminectomy (which relieves pressure on the spine), lumbar surgery, a partial knee replacement and vocal repair—though not solely due to his stunts in The Mummy franchise. He also did a lot of jumping, running, hurtling and screaming in films such as George of the Jungle and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
"I got a little banged up from years of doing my own stunts," he said, "and needed a surgical fix on the spine and the hinges."
All that surgery "took a lot out of me," he admitted. "I knew I would get better, but it took a long time."
The Guy Behind the Guy
Not that Fraser did everything himself.
"There was fighting, but my stuntman was awesome," he told Popverse, seemingly referring to Mark Henson, who also was his double in The Mummy Returns.
Life After Imhotep?
Rob Cohen directed the third film, but Sommers isn't opposed to coming back for his own third Mummy movie, should all the stars align.
Though maybe not all the stars...
"I'd probably do a different [villain]," the filmmaker told SYFY Wire in 2023. "I love Arnold Vosloo, he’s one of my best friends. I talk to Arnold all the time, but I think you’d have to do something [different]. Bringing him back for the sequel, it really worked and made sense and the rules worked. But sometimes, you just have to change things up a little bit."
As for Fraser, who at the time was about to win his Best Actor Oscar for The Whale, Sommers said, "I'm so happy for him and so proud of him. I love to see him win. He was a dream."
Likening him to the equally nice and hard-working Hugh Jackman, the star of his 2004 film Van Helsing, he added, "You really don’t want someone who's whiny or a jerk. You don’t want any jerks around and that was so nice to have all those people. They were just great."
The Mummy is currently back in theaters in honor of its 25th anniversary. Check your local listings.
(E! and Universal Pictures are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)