After being floated for multiple Marvel roles over the years, actor Adam Driver has spoken up about why he chose to say yes to playing Mister Sinister in the “X-Men” reboot.
Mister Sinister, aka Dr. Nathaniel Essex, is a superintelligent, shape-shifting telepath in the comics. He hasn’t been realised on the big screen before, though both “The New Mutants” and the scrapped “Gambit” film did consider it. He has appeared in “X-Men: The Animated Series” and in multiple video games including the recent “Marvel’s Wolverine”.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Driver discussed the reasons for joining the movie saying he was a “big fan” of the “X-Men” before adding:
“I was a fan of the other things too, but this one felt like the right time. It was really ‘X-Men,’ Jake Schreier, who’s the director, his idea for it, and that it’s Kevin Feige. It all kind of came together. The script is really cool.”
He added that he was very selective about joining the MCU because he didn’t want to pick one of the bad projects:
“A lot of people are going to watch it, and if it’s bad, you know, a lot of people will see you being bad. Plus, I don’t want to mess it up.”
Indeed, Driver has famously turned down multiple offers from Marvel to the point that Marvel chief Kevin Feige saying Driver being offered and then turning down roles had become a “long-lived tradition”.
Filming on “X-Men” is expected to take place next year. Driver’s next is Michael Mann’s “Heat 2” in which he plays the villain – that will shoot across the first half of 2027.
The comments come as “X-Men” casting rumors continue to swirl, the latest from scooper James Mack indicating Hunter Schafer for Mystique and Drew Starkey for Gambit. They follow on from reports that at least two actors, one of which being Jeremy Allen White, are rumored to have had talks about being Wolverine.
