Bryan Cranston Still Wants to Play ‘X-Men’ Villain Mr. Sinister
Every comic book studio has the thing they do that frustrates fans. Marvel refuses to give the Black Widow her own spin-off movie; the DC Cinematic Universe keeps selling us on a version of Superman that breaks necks and gets freaky in bathtubs; 20th Century Fox casts incredible actors and buries them beneath layers of makeup and prosthetics. The last one is particularly frustrating when a great actor all-but shouts that he’s cool with hours in the makeup trailer and they still don’t seem to have a place for him.
In a recent video for AMC (via Heroic Hollywood), Greg Gunberg asked former Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston to name his dream villain in a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Cranston touched on his desire to create a new character — one that hasn’t appeared in film before — before once more dropping the name of Mr. Sinister.
Lex Luthor, there’s been a lot of that. I’ve been asked to take a look at Commissioner Gordon. It’s like, I would be one in several and I would kind of like to carve out a new identity. Mister Sinister has always been someone…that would be very cool.
This isn’t the first time that Cranston has spoken up about playing the role of Mr. Sinister in the X-Men franchise. At Comic-Con 2015, IGN covered a panel discussion with Cranston where the actor spoke up about his desire to bring a new character like Sinister from the page to the screen. Unfortunately, with reports emerging that the character will likely appear in the final Hugh Jackman Wolverine movie, odds are this ship has sadly sailed. If Cranston wants to bring a brand new character from the page to the screen, he will want to start his search over now that Sinister might be taken.
Regardless, it does seem a little strange that no studio has cast Cranston as the bad guy in a comic book movie yet. Few actors of his caliber have been this vocal about jumping into a major superhero franchise — heck, the guy signed on for a voice role in Power Rangers for cryin’ out loud — so any studio that brings in Cranston would be getting an A-list talent with actual enthusiasm for the project. That would go a long way towards offsetting the dead look in Michael Fassbender’s eyes these days.