Warner Bros' The Mummy ad was banned — its 'dead child' poster sat near a nursery

To promote 'Lee Cronin's The Mummy', a 2026 reboot of the monster classic, Warner Bros ran posters on the London Underground and on billboards. One series of images showed a close-up of a female mummy figure with sunken features, grey ashen skin, cracked lips and one eye swollen shut, under the tagline 'Some things are meant to stay buried'.

The Advertising Standards Authority received 30 complaints. It judged that the figure's 'grey, ashen skin, cracked lips and fixed, vacant expression' gave a realistic impression of a dead child, and noted that one billboard was visible from outside a children's nursery. Warner Bros argued the character was a living mummy who returned as a young adult after being kidnapped, and that the creative had been cleared by Transport for London and the Global advertising network.

The ASA upheld the complaint against the posters, finding they breached CAP Code rule 4.2 (harm and offence) and rule 1.3 (social responsibility). The TV and streaming spots, shown after the 19:30 watershed with Clearcast's clearance, were not upheld.

The posters must not appear again in the complained-about form. The ruling was published on 5 August 2026, and BBC News covered the decision the same day.