Brendan Fraser Lands First Major Post-Oscar Role with ‘Beef’ Director Hikari’s ‘Rental Family’

After saying that he’d be very picky about his next role after winning an Oscar, Brendan Fraser has found it. He will star in “Rental Family” for Searchlight Pictures and from filmmaker Hikari, best known for her work on “Beef.”

Fraser in “Rental Family” will star as a down-and-out actor living in Tokyo who is hired as a token American guy for a Japanese rental family company providing professional stand-in services.

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Hikari has been developing “Rental Family” since 2019, and she also co-wrote the film with Stephen Blahut. The film will begin principal photography this spring in Japan. No release date has been announced.

Eddie Vaisman and Julia Lebedev of Sight Unseen, which produced this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “A Thousand and One,” are producing “Rental Family.” Hikari and Shin Yamaguchi, who produced her prior feature “37 Seconds” in 2019, will also produce. Blahut and Tomo Koizumi will executive produce.

SVP of Production Taylor Friedman and Manager of Creative Affairs Daniel Yu are overseeing the film for Searchlight Pictures and are reporting to production and development heads Katie Goodson-Thomas and DanTram Nguyen.

Brendan Fraser earlier this year won the Best Actor Oscar for “The Whale,” Darren Aronofsky’s drama in which he plays a morbidly obese and lonely writing teacher trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. This year he also appeared briefly in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” — a performance for which the director defended Fraser’s work — and was recently seen in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.” He’s also known for “The Mummy” and “George of the Jungle” franchises, “Encino Man,” “Crash,” “The Quiet American,” and more.

CAA, Linden Entertainment, Felker Toczek Suddleson.

Deadline first reported the news.

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