Brendan Fraser says he’d do Mummy reboot as he’s never been ‘this famous and unsalaried at the same time’

‘We’ve all got to start somewhere,’ actor joked

Brendan Fraser says he wouldn’t be opposed to a reboot of The Mummy as he’d be looking forward to the paycheque.

The star recently joked that he had never been “this famous and unsalaried at the same time” after his lauded role in The Whale fired him back into the public conscience.

Since Darren Aronofsky’s drama returned the actor to the spotlight, fans have been clambering to find out whether Fraser will one day reprise his role as adventurer Rick O’Connell.

“Gosh, I don’t know any juicy details about it, but it’s kinda been an open-ended question for some time now,” Fraser told Deadline in an interview published on Thursday (4 January). “I’m not opposed to it. I don’t know an actor who doesn’t want a job.”

“I don’t think I’ve been this famous and unsalaried at the same time in my professional life, so sign me up,” he continued, joking: “We’ve all got to start somewhere.”

Fraser played O’Connell in a trilogy of Mummy movies from 1999 to 2008.

The franchise was rebooted with Tom Cruise as a lead in 2017. However, it was unable to capture the charm of Fraser’s trilogy and went down as a critical and box office flop.

In a recent interview, Fraser said that Cruise’s reboot “was too much of a straight-ahead horror”.

Brendan Fraser (Getty Images)

“The ingredient that we had going for our Mummy, which I didn’t see in that film, was fun,” he said. “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.”

In The Whale, Fraser plays a 42-stone (267kg) English teacher desperately trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter before it is too late.

Though he has already been nominated for a Golden Globe, the actor will not attend the ceremony after previously accusing the HFPA’s former president of assaulting him.