The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has banned outdoor poster ads for Lee Cronin's The Mummy, ruling that an image of a mummified figure gave "a realistic impression of a dead child" and was likely to distress young children who encountered it on the London Underground and at other untargeted sites. The ruling, published 5 August 2026, upheld one of four complaints investigated by the ASA and rejected the other three. Warner Bros. Entertainment U.K. Ltd., the film's distributor, was directed to ensure future marketing likely to frighten young children stays away from places where they would see it. Variety

The ASA received 30 complaints about the campaign, which ran in April 2026 ahead of the film's 17 April UK release. Many complainants said the ads were distressing for both children and adults. The posters showed a close-up of a mummified female figure — grey, ashen skin, cracked lips, one eye swollen shut — wrapped in shroud-like material inscribed with hieroglyphic symbols. The ASA concluded that the figure's features, combined with the wrapping, read as a dead child, and that running the image in untargeted locations, including one visible from a children's nursery, made distress to young viewers likely. The BBC separately reported the ban as covering the London Underground specifically. BBC

Warner Bros. pushed back. The studio argued that the poster's neutral expression, open eye, and absence of a sarcophagus or restraints were deliberate choices meant to reduce distress, and that the posters were not designed to cause fear. The studio also noted an internal outdoor-buying policy of keeping horror titles at least 100 metres from schools — a standard that, as the ASA pointed out, does not extend to nurseries. According to the ASA's adjudication record, the character depicted was a living mummy returned to her parents as a teenager or young adult years after the events shown, not a dead child. ASA

The ASA did not act on every complaint. It rejected the argument that the posters trivialised child loss or ongoing global conflicts, finding that text identifying the image as film promotion provided sufficient context.

The campaign's TV and streaming spots fared better. Those ads depicted a family receiving a call about a daughter who had gone missing eight years earlier, with the father questioning what she was doing in a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. On-screen text read "Some Things Are Meant to Stay Buried." Both the TV ad and a matching Prime Video spot ran with a post-7:30 p.m. scheduling restriction cleared by Clearcast, the body that pre-vets UK television advertising. The ASA noted Clearcast's data showing an average children's index of 31 across the TV placements, well below the industry baseline of 100 that represents typical child viewership. No further action was required for the TV or streaming ads.

The film itself, distributed by Warner Bros., opened in the UK on 17 April 2026 and grossed $2.9 million in that market. The ASA's full adjudication is published on its website.