villains Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It wasn't long ago that we were debating whether supervillains could be front and center in their own movie. And now we might get to find out! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal has optioned Villains, a four-issue series penned by Adam Cogan and Ryan Cody.

Villains follows Nick Corrigan, an aimless young man who discovers that his elderly neighbor, Charlie Cobb, used to be the notorious supervillan, Hardliner. He's now living the quiet and anonymous life -- and Corrigan offers to help keep it that way if only Hardliner will teach him the ways of the supervillain. Hardliner would rather, in the words of Issue 2, "rip the kid's throat out," but he grudgingly complies, and even lends Corrigan his armor. But if there's one man you shouldn't trust to be straight with you, it's a retired supervillain, and things go sour pretty quickly. You can get a peek at the series on Viper Comics' official site. It looks like the series has been around since 2006, but hasn't quite made it to the finish line.

Matt Jennison and Brent Strickland have been hired to pen the adaptation -- they're the two guys rewriting Wonder Woman, so they certainly know their way around a comic book. No director has been attached yet, but here's hoping this doesn't just get shoved into pre-production limbo. It sounds like Apt Pupil and Gran Torino by way of The Incredibles -- and that would be a movie worth seeing.

Frankly I'm a little bit confused as to why Sam Raimi never allowed Dylan Baker to become The Lizard. The guy had three full movies in which to utilize the character, but then again -- I suppose "The Lizard" isn't nearly as high-profile (or as nifty) as Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, The Sandman, or Venom. But they let a one-armed Dylan Baker hang around for this long, so why not give the actor his shot at villainy already?

Having ranted that, I now turn my attentions towards some of the other (as yet unused) Spider-Man villains -- and this superhero has lots of 'em. (I'm fully convinced that Spidey's "rogue gallery" is one of the biggest reasons for the book's ongoing popularity.) I realize that some of these guys might work better on the page than on the big screen, but hey, you can't make two more Spidey sequels without two or three (or four) new villains. So even though the screenplays are probably already finished, I figure this is a fun topic to toss around...

Jason Statham as The Vulture -- I vaguely remember this green, winged character being a bit older than Mr. Statham, but Vulty was also bald and a real nasty character, so I'd still go with Statham.

Bill Paxton as Mysterio -- Dunno why I picked Paxton. Probably because he's one of my favorite actors, and I'd love to see him play a big-budget villain. Plus he wears a big fish-bowl on his head, so any good actor with a strong voice could pull this off.

Gerard Butler as Kraven the Hunter -- Like this guy couldn't play a homicidal game hunter. Plus he kinda looks like Kraven.

If you're a serious Spider-Man fan, you've probably been wondering when the producers were gonna dust off Dylan Baker and FINALLY let him become the super-villain we've all been waiting for. Yes, newbies, the one-armed college professor who appears in all three Spider-Man films (for about 90 seconds at a time) is the guy who eventually gets turned into man-sized Lizard with a true hatred for Spider-Man. I'm assuming Sam Raimi wedged the character into the first two films, hoping to deliver a pay-off in Spider-Man 3, but I guess that flick was just too damn cluttered with other baddies.

According to one source, not only will Baker finally become The Lizard in Spider-Man 4, but we'll also have to contend with a certain villain known as Carnage. Spider-Man 4 would have to go a little bit "darker" than its predecessors to accurately capture the Carnage story, which focuses on a serial killer called Cletus Kasady who comes into contact with some of Eddie Brock's "symbiote" goo while they're both stuck in prison. (Connors, on the other hand, becomes Lizard after injecting himself with reptilian DNA in an effort to re-grow his missing arm.)

FreezeDriedMovies.com claims that these scoops come from the same source that gave them the Venom scoop a while back, so hopefully both villain reports are accurate. Apparently there's also talk of getting Black Cat into the Spider-Man 4 mix, because if a record-breaking opening weekend tells you one thing, it's that you can never have too many villains in your Spidey sequels. (Perhaps we'll get some of the goofier villains -- Rhino, Vulture, Electro, Kraven the Hunter -- in Spider-Man 5.) Plus, wasn't there a set-up for the Man-Wolf villain in Spider-Man 2? I can hardly keep track at this point.