'This is some screwy way for an adult to be spending his career, right?" laughs Brendan Fraser.
The actor stars in two big summer movies released in Japan in August. And each film puts Fraser in a role that is far from unfamiliar. Though he has participated in a gamut of screen genres, Fraser has been more or less pigeonholed into two of them: adventure films, thanks to the success of the Egyptian-themed "The Mummy" (1999) and its sequels, and comedies — romantic and otherwise — such as "George of the Jungle" (1997) and the 2000 remake of 1967's "Bedazzled" (which originally starred Dudley Moore). Both his new movies are popcorn-munching adventure flicks; but perhaps the more anticipated is the sequel "The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," which opens in Japan on Aug. 16.
There's much speculation as to whether this third installment in the "The Mummy" series, released seven years after the second and set in China rather than Egypt, will be anywhere near as popular. Yet even if it doesn't match its predecessors' popularity — which it may, partly because it will also be released in China sometime in August, and features such Chinese stars as Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh — it's bound to be an international hit.