Those who care anything about the latter-day Mummy franchise have had some trying times lately. The director’s chair has passed from Stephen Sommers (bad, but enjoyable so) to Rob Cohen (so very much worse, and dull to boot). The latest installment is being written by the feeble scribes behind Smallville. They’re shifting the focus of the film to the teenaged son. Jet Li’s supposedly the bad guy. Can an announcement that it’ll be in 3-D DecrepitVision be far behind?

It’ll have to follow the continuing bad news in the form of Oded Fehr not returning as Ardeth Bay, the mighty cool Arabic counterpart to Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell. While doing the rounds promoting his role in the latest Resident Evil flick, Fehr revealed that his character isn’t a part of the third one at all, even though he’d be more than happy to suit up (and collect some checks) if he was offered the role again.

Alas, he wasn’t and the pre-production on this….thing continues. This series needs more bad news like I need a fresh box of AIDS.