In 2008, Brendan Fraser starred in adventure movie Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which wasn’t too far from his old-fashioned action hero role in The Mummy. But when the film was in post-production, the VFX artists working on it had their wages stopped. Meteor Studios declared bankruptcy while owing the VFX team over a million dollars in wages.
Senior VFX artist Dave Rand tried to get Variety interested in publishing a story about it, but were told that it was not newsworthy. Rand put out his own press release and tried to get in touch with Brendan Fraser via his reps, but they didn’t pass the message on.
“Meteor Studios was declared bankrupt shortly after filming,” Rand told Page Six in 2008. “It has since reopened as a new company, Lumiere VFX, at the same location. Discovery is attempting to get away with this. Some of the employees worked over 100-hour weeks. Over $1 million is owed. We just want to get paid for the work we performed. We are extremely proud of our work on the film.”
A few days later, Page Six reported that Fraser’s rep said he had been making calls to help them get paid. “Brendan just heard about this for the first time. He’s on it. He thinks what happened is awful, and he’s extremely upset,” said the representative. Rand confirms that once Fraser was made aware of the situation, he called him, asked a lot of questions and promised to call him back regularly until the situation was resolved.
Fraser publicly campaigned for the VFX team, and they ended up being paid 80% of what they were owed two years later. Rand said they need Fraser’s leverage to get anywhere, but Fraser willingly stepped in to help. Fraser is currently on a comeback tour, after a period away from Hollywood. He is starring in drama movie The Whale and very strongly tipped to win the Best Actor Oscar in 2023.