Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell has already survived Hamunaptra, a plague of locusts and an undead high priest with a grudge. This week he cleared a much lower bar: Canadian licensing.
Netflix Canada announced the arrival on X, telling subscribers that “THE MUMMY series is now on Netflix in Canada!” The post did not specify which instalments made the trip, though the franchise tag usually means the 1999 original at minimum. Netflix opened for business in Canada in September 2010, which makes the film older than the service that now hosts it.
That original, directed by Stephen Sommers and released by Universal on May 7, 1999, was a loose remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff picture — and a calculated bet. It cost about $80 million, made roughly $409 million worldwide, finished as the sixth-highest-grossing film of its year, and did it all on mixed reviews that never dented the ticket sales.
Critics sniffed; audiences didn’t. The film sits at 61 percent with critics on Rotten Tomatoes but 75 percent with viewers, and the sequels followed fast. The Mummy Returns took $443 million globally in 2001 — still the biggest box-office hit of Fraser’s career — and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor added another $400 million in 2008, with Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz as Evelyn. The 2002 spinoff The Scorpion King handed Dwayne Johnson his first leading role, after a prologue cameo in the 1999 film. All in, the series cleared $1 billion.
Universal has since tried twice to start over. A 2017 reboot starring Tom Cruise, built to launch a shared “Dark Universe,” was poorly received and quietly abandoned. Fraser, meanwhile, spent a decade out of the spotlight before Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale won him the best actor Oscar in 2023, capping the comeback fans dubbed the Brenaissance — a nod to the actor born to Canadian parents.
He has since said he will return as Rick O’Connell for a new Mummy, telling France’s arts24 at the Deauville festival that the role is back on his dance card. Streaming rights are a smaller prize, but the timing is tidy.
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is now two years older than the Canadian service streaming it.
