Mike Myers Teases Bringing Back Austin Powers

Good news for that one birthday party impersonator: Austin Powers might be coming back. After seemingly milking the bespectacled superspy for all he was worth more than two decades ago, Mike Myers just hinted that a reboot could be on its way sooner rather than later.

Myers recently attended New York Magazine’s Vulture Festival, where he was presented with an honorary “Master of Culture” degree for his non-Love Guru contributions to film and television. At the event, Myers recalled how he first heard about Dana Carvey from a Toronto taxi dispatcher (since he never watched Saturday Night Live growing up) and admitted that, despite being a veritable comedic catchphrase factory, he never consciously “designed” catchphrases.

But the biggest tidbit of news was revealed before he was presented with the fake degree. Speaking with TooFab outside of the venue, Myers was asked about potential revivals of some of his most iconic characters, including Shrek the ogre, who will be returning for Shrek 5 at some point in the near-future, at least according to Eddie Murphy. “I can’t tease anything. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any element that I should or should not say,” Myers joked, adding, “I’ve never used that answer before, by the way.”

Seconds before he was whisked away by a handler, Myers was asked if the Austin Powers franchise would ever come back. At first it seemed as though Myers was going to offer up another boilerplate denial, but after considering the question, he made a surprising admission: “Again… it’s uh… I would be surprised if it didn’t.” 

Myers has teased the possibility of another Austin Powers film in the past, but has been decidedly noncommittal on the subject of whether or not any plans were actually in place. His recent statement is much more definitive, although it begs the question: Is bringing back Austin Powers a good idea?

The first movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was basically a one-joke premise — what if a spy character from the ‘60s was forced to adjust to life in the ‘90s. But somehow, the character outlived that central conceit and returned for a sequel in which he returned to the ‘60s after having been acclimated to the ‘90s, and yet another movie in which he travels back/forward to the 1970s for some reason.

Of course, it’s been nearly 30 years since the first movie premiered, which happens to be the same amount of time that Austin was cryogenically frozen to begin with. If the first movie parodied the cultural shift between 1967 and 1997, Myers could similarly poke fun at how society has changed since the ‘90s. But, again, since the series continued into the 21st century, and arguably fizzled out, even that approach wouldn’t fully make sense.

It’s also entirely possible that Myers didn’t mean to imply that Austin would be returning for a movie. Myers has already brought back Powers’ arch-nemesis, Dr. Evil, for a GM Super Bowl commercial.

And before that, he revived another old character, Wayne Campbell, to promote Uber Eats.

So it’s entirely possible that Austin Powers will return, but only for 30 seconds, just to extol the virtues of Taco Bell or the “shagadelic” Exxon Mobil.