Brendan Fraser landed on the A-list thanks to his roll as the rollicking adventurer Rick O’Connell in “The Mummy” and its two sequels. And he hasn’t returned to the land of the undead since 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” but Fraser says he’s open to revisiting the franchise that made him a megastar.
“I don’t know how it would work,” he admits. “But I’d be open to it if someone came up with the right conceit.”
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Fraser shared his thoughts on the film series as part of a Variety cover story on the making of “The Whale,” a drama about an obese man trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter. That film has landed him in the thick of the Oscar race.
As part of the story, Fraser looked back on his matinee idol days. “The Mummy” director Stephen Sommers said he cast the actor because he possessed a very specific set of skills.
“He could throw a punch and take a punch and he had a great sense of humor,” he says. “You really like the guy. He never comes across as cocky or arrogant.”
He added that Fraser did as many of his own stunts as he could, even injuring his knee at one point, but powering through it to complete the film. “He was game for anything we threw at him,” Sommers says.
When Universal rebooted “The Mummy” in 2017, Fraser wasn’t invited back to the party. Instead, it was Tom Cruise who was left to deal with the consequences of unearthing an ancient tomb.
“It is hard to make that movie,” he says. “The ingredient that we had going for our Mummy, which I didn’t see in that film, was fun. That was what was lacking in that incarnation. It was too much of a straight-ahead horror movie. ‘The Mummy’ should be a thrill ride, but not terrifying and scary.”
“I know how difficult it is to pull it off,” Fraser adds. “I tried to do it three times.”
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