Rachel Weisz was forced to back out of The Mummy 3, but she's been replaced by another yummy mummy,
Maria Bello, star of
Thank You For Smoking, A History of Violence, and
The Cooler.
Maria Bello will play the same role as
Rachel Weisz, according to Variety, which seems like an odd choice. Why not just write out the character played by
Rachel Weisz and write in a new one? That might still happen, but the early word is that
Maria Bello will play Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell, the part played by
Rachel Weisz in the first two films.
Maria Bello joins Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Luke Ford in the film that will be directed by Rob Cohen for Universal.
Miles Millar and Alfred Gough of Smallville fame have written the script for The Mummy 3, which will find the O'Connells and their son (Ford) headed to the forbidden tombs of China and the Himalayas. While on their unusual family vacation, Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello will battle a shape-shifting mummy, a former Chinese emperor played by Jet Li and a wizard played by Michelle Yeoh.
The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, which starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, grossed more than $830 million worldwide for Universal. The Mummy 3 will return next summer and Sean Daniel, Jim Jacks, Stephen Sommers, and Bob Ducsay will produce. Maria Bello is repped by CAA and manager John Carrabino.
The 40-year-old Maria Bello broke through on ER and in films like Permanent Midnight and Payback. She went on to star in Coyote Ugly, Duets, Auto Focus, The Cooler, Secret Window, Silver City, Assault on Precinct 13, The Sisters, The Dark, A History of Violence, Thank You For Smoking, World Trade Center, and last fall's Flicka. You can next catch Maria Bello in Butterfly on a Wheel with Pierce Brosnan, which will open this summer, and IMDB reports that she'll also appear in The Jane Austen Book Club with Emily Blunt, Downloading Nancy with Jason Patric, Alan Ball's Nothing is Private with Aaron Eckhart, and Yellow Handkerchief with William Hurt. All of those projects are in post-production, allowing Maria Bello to go into The Mummy 3 as soon as possible.
Rating: 2
Oh blah! Can't they come up with better designs? Maybe if Rachel wore this to Halloween, it would be an entirely different story. Rachel probably wanted simple elegance but it came out boring and ugly - a really bad combination.
[Source]