Brendan Fraser will be wreaking havoc in Gotham City.
Fraser, who is best known for his role as Rick O’Connell in The Mummy trilogy, has been cast in Warner Bros. and DC Films’ upcoming movie Batgirl. Though not confirmed, sources told Deadline that he will be playing the supervillain Firefly in the pic.
Directed by Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah from a script by Birds of Prey screenwriter Christina Hodson, Batgirl stars In the Heights actress Leslie Grace as the titular superhero. While plot details are being kept under wraps, it has been previously revealed that Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham police commissioner Jim Gordon, will be the character behind the cape in this iteration of the DC vigilante.
In addition to Grace, other previously announced Batgirl cast members are Whiplash star J.K. Simmons and Bad Boys for Life actor Jacob Scipio. Simmons returns as Commissioner Gordon in Batgirl, after portraying the character in Zack Snyder’s 2017 film Justice League. Meanwhile, Scipio’s Batgirl role is currently unknown.
Created by France Herron and Dick Sprang, Firefly first appeared in 1952’s Detective Comics #184. A recurring pyromaniac supervillain of the Bat family, Firefly played a major role in the Batgirl: Year One comic miniseries, which redefined Barbara Gordon’s origin in the early 2000s.
Though Fraser is the first actor to play Firefly in a live-action movie, both Andrew Dunbar and Michelle Veintimilla have previously portrayed the character in the flesh. In 2013, Dunbar appeared as Firefly, aka Garfield Lynns, in the first season of The CW’s Arrow. Michelle Veintimilla, meanwhile, recurred as a female version of Firefly named Bridgit Pike on Fox’s Gotham from 2015 to 2018.
Fraser is not new to the DC Universe. The actor currently voices Robotman on HBO Max’s Doom Patrol and appears as Robotman’s human version, Cliff Steele, in flashback scenes.
Aside from Batgirl, which is expected to bow on HBO Max sometime in 2022, Fraser will also be seen in Darren Aronofsky’s psychological drama The Whale, Martin Scorsese’s Western crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, and Max Barbakow’s comedy flick Brothers.