Brendan Fraser Just Won An Important Award And Could Be Headed For An Oscar
It's about time.
Brendan Fraser is an absolute ’90s icon, but it looks like he might be gearing up for a late-career renaissance. His recent transformative performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is getting a lot of awards season buzz and he just scored a very important accolade that could help pave his way to Oscar gold. Fraser won the Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Tribute Award.
While this might not seem like a big deal, the TIFF Tribute Award has been awarded to several Oscar nominees and winners since the award was first offered in 2019. For instance, in 2021 Benedict Cumberbatch and Jessica Chastain took home the award for The Power of the Dog and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, respectively. In 2020, Sir Anthony Hopkins took it home for The Father, and in 2019 Joaquin Phoenix nabbed it for Joker. This bodes well for Brendan Fraser, who will hopefully at least get an Oscar nomination when the Academy Awards are announced.
The Whale stars Brendan Fraser as an English teacher and compulsive over-eater who tries to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter, played by Stranger Things star Sadie Sink. The Whale is directed by Darren Aronofsky, his first feature project since 2017’s divisive Mother! Samuel D. Hunter wrote the screenplay and the cast is rounded out by Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, Huck Milner, Ryan Heinke, and Sathya Sridharan.
This acclaimed performance will be a big win for Brendan Fraser, which is good news after one of his upcoming blockbusters was outright canceled. Controversially, Warner Discovery opted to ax the upcoming DC film Batgirl, supposedly for tax reasons. The film was essentially complete, making it an extremely surprising decision. It would have been interesting to see Fraser in the film since he would be playing a villain, a role he doesn’t always go for. Fraser was set to play Firefly and face off against Leslie Grace’s Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. Michael Keaton would also be appearing as Batman.
While we might get to see Keaton as Batman again in the upcoming Flash movie, it’s unlikely that we’ll get to see Brendan Fraser’s Firefly. DC fans will just have to settle for Fraser’s role in the series Doom Patrol, which will be returning for a fourth season. Fans of Doom Patrol should make sure to watch the new season in droves to save it from the uncertain fate that other DC projects face in the wake of the Warner Discovery merger.
Despite the Batgirl setback, Brendan Fraser should have a pretty good year ahead of him. Along with the acclaim for his performance in The Whale and his role in the hit Doom Patrol series, he’s also set to appear in the Martin Scorcese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023. Killers of the Flower Moon will reunite Scorcese with his longtime collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The film is based on the David Grann book of the same name about the 1920s FBI investigation into the murders of members of the Osage tribe. Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t have a release date yet, but we’ll keep you updated.
