Brendan Fraser has been cast in director Martin Scorsese’s hotly-anticipated new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, Deadline exclusively reports. Based on the non-fiction book by David Grann and featuring Scorsese mainstays Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon stars Jesse Plemons in the lead.
Fraser will play lawyer WS Hamilton in the film, per Deadline. The actor has had somewhat of a career resurgence in recent years, after suddenly disappearing from the cultural landscape despite starring in some of the biggest blockbusters of the early aughts. Since his return, Fraser has appeared in a supporting role in the third season of Showtime's The Affair, and then in Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy’s FX series Trust and as part of the main cast of DC's Doom Patrol. His most recent film appearance was in Steven Soderbergh’s HBO Max film No Sudden Move.
In a 2018 GQ profile titled "What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?," the actor addressed his brief hiatus from Hollywood, saying that he “was going through things that mold and shape you in ways that you're not ready for until you go through them."
Meanwhile, director Darren Aronofksy is putting together what sounds like a comeback vehicle for Fraser with The Whale, similar to how he put Mickey Rourke back on the map with The Wrestler. The Deadline report also mentions that Fraser has boarded Palm Springs director Max Barbakow’s new comedy Brothers, which is currently in production.
Killers of the Flower Moon was originally set up at Paramount before budget constraints compelled Scorsese to turn to Apple TV+. The legendary filmmaker is coming off of perhaps his most ambitious picture, Netflix’s The Irishman, which landed 10 nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Killers of the Flower Moon is written by Eric Roth, who told Collider that “it'll be like nothing we've ever seen.” He said, “I know Marty's trying to make a movie that's probably the last Western that would be made like this, and yet, with this incredible social document underneath it, and the violence and the environment. I think it'll be like nothing we've ever seen, in a way. And so this one is, to me, one for the ages.”
The crime drama is set in 1920s Oklahoma, where a particularly brutal series of murders in the oil-wealthy Osage Nation ignited the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The cast also includes Lily Gladstone, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Jason Isbell, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd, and Sturgill Simpson, among others. There is no firm release date yet.