Brendan Fraser Teases Hope for New 'The Mummy' Sequel With Subtle Shade at Tom Cruise

Brendan Fraser is the latest star on the cusp of a career renaissance thanks to his upcoming drama The Whale, but he is looking to get back to the franchise that made him a star. In a new Variety interview, Fraser said he would be interested in playing adventurer Rick O'Connell again in a new Mummy movie if possible. He also explained why he thinks Tom Cruise's 2017 Mummy movie bombed.

"I don't know how it would work... but I'd be open to it if someone came up with the right conceit," Fraser told Variety when asked about possibly making a third sequel to The Mummy. Fraser was not asked to even make a cameo when Universal Pictures revived The Mummy again in 2017. Cruise starred as U.S. Army Sgt. Nick Morton, who had to deal with the consequences of opening a cursed mummy tomb.

"It is hard to make that movie," Fraser told Variety. "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."

Cruise's Mummy movie was a critical and financial disaster for Universal. It did so poorly that Universal pulled the plug on a planned "Dark Universe" that would link all of its monster characters together. In April, director Alex Kurtzman said there were "about a million things I regret" about the 2017 Mummy.

"I know how difficult it is to pull it off," Fraser told Variety. "I tried to do it three times."

Stephen Sommers, who directed Fraser's first two Mummy movies, told Variety that Fraser was the perfect actor in the late 1990s to play Rick O'Connell. "He could throw a punch and take a punch and he had a great sense of humor. You really like the guy. He never comes across as cocky or arrogant," Sommers said, before going on to praise Fraser for even doing his own stunts. "He was game for anything we threw at him."

The Mummy franchise dates back to 1932 when Universal released the original film. That movie spawned four sequels, plus the 1955 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Hammer Film Productions in the U.K. also produced a series of Mummy movies between 1959 and 1971. Universal revived the series again with Fraser's and Summers' first film in 1999. The Mummy Returns followed in 2001 and Rob Cohen's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opened in 2008.