Why Wasn’t Rachel Weisz In The Mummy 3?

In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Rachel Weisz did not reprise her role as adventurer Rick O’Connell’s equally capable wife Evie.

In 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Rachel Weisz did not return to play adventurer Rick O’Connell’s equally capable wife Evie. Many people were surprised at the time, as Sheisz’s role as Evie in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns launched her career into Hollywood’s elite. As an actress, she has won three Oscars, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for her work. The Rachel Weisz The Mummy recast is explained here.

Despite leaving The Mummy behind, Rachel Weisz’s career has seen a healthy mix of mainstream projects and prestige dramas. Black Widow was her first role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A surrogate mother figure to Natasha Romanoff, Weisz plays Melina Vostakoff, another graduate of the Black Widow Red Room spy training facility.

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The Rachel Weisz The Mummy recast has been the subject of several different stories over the years. Maria Bello eventually took over the role of Evie. Check out what Weisz herself has said about the reasons for her departure from the series.

Rob Cohen, the sequel’s director, explained Rachel Weisz’s departure from the role of Evie in Digital Spy. As Evie and Rick’s son was being aged up for the film, Cohen suggested Weisz balked at the idea of playing a character with an adult son. Weisz’s departure from The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was also attributed to script problems at the time [via Cinema Blend]. According to Weisz, it did a disservice to the Evie character, so she didn’t want to return to the role. The reports were denied by Universal at the time, but Weisz remained silent.

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According to Rachel Weisz’s representative, she stepped away from The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor because she had a newborn son and didn’t want to be away from him for an extended period to shoot the next installment. Her involvement in two other films around the same time, however, casts doubt on that theory. It sometimes gets overlooked in retrospect, but Weisz herself offered a more mundane explanation for her absence from The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor than any of the above. She was interviewed by the U.K.-based ES Magazine in its Nov. 16 issue back in 2008. It was the scheduling of the project’s production that put Weisz off the project, she said. Filming the movie would have required her to spend five months in China following the completion of Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom. Scheduling conflicts seem to be the most likely explanation for her absence.

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Besides Rachel Weisz, Evie and Rick O’Connell’s son, Alex, was also recast in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The Mummy Returns shows Alex as an eight-year-old in 1933, but The Mummy 3 jumps forward thirteen years to 1946, making him twenty-one. As a result of the time jump, the film takes place in post-World War II China, with the villains resurrecting Jet Li’s Mummy Emperor to restore order to the country. A second reason was to make Alex O’Connell into a full-blown adventurer/explorer like his mother and father. Since there was only a seven-year gap between the movies, Freddie Boath was too young to return as Alex in The Mummy Returns. The role of Alex was, therefore, recast with Australian actor Luke Ford.

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Rachel Weisz didn’t return for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor due to quality concerns, which proved prophetic, as the movie received scathing reviews. Although criticism was equally distributed across all aspects of the film, a lot was focused on Evie’s recasting, and fans lamented the absence of Weisz. In this movie, Maria Bello’s relationship and chemistry with Brendan Fraser pale in comparison to Weisz’s. Additionally, it was the lowest-grossing movie in the trilogy (but still managed $400 million globally).

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The Mummy 4 was being considered by Universal Studios. The O’Connell family would have traveled to South America to battle Antonio Banderas’ villain in the movie tentatively titled The Mummy: Rise of the Aztec. In 2008, Luke Ford stated [via Bloody Disgusting] that he had been signed on to star in three Mummy movies. In addition to Maria Bello, Rachel Weisz was not contracted to return as Evie in The Mummy 4.

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