Mike Meyers plans to defrost Austin Powers once again

This isn’t unexpected, and not just because of the general business trends in Hollywood. Meyers has been mentioning Austin Powers 4 since at least 2018, when he told ET that he wanted to make the movie from Dr. Evil’s perspective. “So it would be Dr. Evil 1, Austin Powers 4, is how I would roll,” he said at the time. “Start the campaign, please. Thank you.” That push clearly wasn’t especially successful so maybe this is Meyers restarting the campaign for himself. 

Other than a handful of commercials featuring the characters from the Austin Powers movies—including a Dr. Evil-focused Verizon commercial that ran just this week—this franchise has been on hiatus since 2002’s Goldmember. When the first movie, International Man Of Mystery, debuted in 1997, Austin had spent 30 years frozen in a cryochamber, emerging with a cartoonish 1960s sensibility into the world of the late 90s and early 2000s. Given that we’re nearly 30 years out from 1997, perhaps it’s time to defrost Austin yet again and put him on the cinema marquee with all the scary movies and devils who wear Prada. In the meantime, Meyers has Shrek 5 to promote.