Marvel Studios since landing the Fantastic Four and X-Men rights back from 20th Century Studios after their merger with The Walt Disney Company has led to some interesting fan-casting suggestions. The biggest call from the online community it is to have real-life married couple John Kransinski and Emily Blunt play the new versions of Dr. Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic and Sue Storm aka The Invisible Woman in a reboot of the Fantastic Four from director Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home). Sadly, we don’t always get what we want and months after John downplayed his chances on his YouTube show Some Good News, Blunt also poured cold water on the idea as well on The Howard Stern Show.
Sometimes fan-castings are just simple fun that can be taken a little too seriously by fans and can lead to a neverending attempt by outlets to get actors to repeat quotes about playing superheroes over and over. In other cases, actors simply bring up superhero characters they want to play organically in interviews.
Variety caught up with comedic actor Sam Richardson, who briefly mentions his desire to play Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast from X-Men, comparing the mutant superhero to his character Richard Splett on the Emmy-winning HBO political comedy series Veep led by Julia Louise-Dreyfus. You might be aware that Julia recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier as Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (possible friend or foe), which has been teased as a reoccurring role in the massive expansive universe.
Now that Sam Richardson has had a taste of action work in Amazon’s upcoming “Tomorrow War” with Chris Pratt, he wants some more. He’d love a shot at playing the X-Men’s Beast. “I think Beast is like a big blue-haired Richard Splett,” he told me at the Big Screen Is Back event, referring to the character he played on “Veep.”
Richardson is likely best-known for his roles on Veep, Spy, and The Office. He most recently worked on Marvel’s new Hulu animated show M.O.D.O.K. as Gary, Amazon’s big alien invasion flick The Tomorrow War that is led by Star-Lord actor Chris Pratt, and has a big role in the upcoming genre flick Werewolves Within. That latter project sees Sam starring alongside Milana Vayntrub, who played Marvel’s Squirrel Girl in the live-action New Warriors series that never got picked-up
Speaking of Juila’s Val, Marvel Studios has been casting a lot of comedic actors for various MCU roles (big and small) over the last couple of years, making Richardson’s Beast request not entirely unobtainable. Some examples include Parks & Rec actor Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, ageless funny man Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Fresh Off The Boat’s Randall Park playing FBI Agent/Agents of Atlas leader Jimmy Woo, Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness, Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani is a main cast member of the Eternals, Kim’s Convenience star Simu Liu is playing their newest superhero Shang-Chi, comedians Awkwafina and Ronny Chieng play supporting roles in Shang-Chi, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius in the Loki series, Community’s Donald Glover was the The Prowler in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Melissa McCarthy plays a fake version of Hela in Thor: Love & Thunder, and most recently Oscar-winner Olivia Colman (Hot Fuzz, Peep Show) taking a mysterious role in Secret Invasion.
Beast is an interesting suggestion given that the MCU incarnation of Hank could have a lot of crossover potential as he started out as a member of the X-Men, only to bounce for the Avengers, and then joined S.W.O.R.D. the cosmic version of S.H.I.E.L.D. that was introduced in WandaVision. S.W.O.R.D. will likely have a huge role in upcoming projects like The Marvels and the Disney+ series Secret Invasion.
During Fox’s era of the X-Men franchise, Beast was played by Kesley Grammer and Nicholas Hoult.
As it stands, Marvel hasn’t officially assigned writers or a director for their X-Men reboot and would give the impression they haven’t thought about casting the mutant heroes.
SOURCE: VARIETY
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