Over the weekend, while attending the premiere of Cirque du Soleil 'OVO' at The Royal Albert Hall in London, KINGSMAN actor Mark Strong confirmed that he'll be taking on the role of Doctor Sivana for DC Entertainment's SHAZAM! movie.
When asked to comment about his rumored involvement in the on-screen adventure about a teenage boy named Billy Batson who is granted the ability to transform into the adult superhero Captain Marvel by shouting the word "SHAZAM," Strong admitted that he was a bit intimidated by David F. Sandberg's approach to secrecy for the film.
"If you stop reading the script for 20 seconds then the whole thing goes fuzzy and you have to start again. Everything is watermarked and traceable too," Strong confessed. "I'm playing an evil bastard called Doctor Sivana, they are always the best characters to play, the most fun. I was Sinestro in Green Lantern which I thought was a rather good film, but it didn't do what they wanted so I feel like I've got unfinished business in the DC world. I played a pretty evil character in that, and he was meant to get even worse in the second one but that never happened. I think I'm going to get the chance to do that in 'Shazam!', I hope so," the British-born actor added.
According to DCWikia: Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, Sr. is Shazam's arch nemesis. Regarded as a brilliant and evil mastermind, he is arguably the archetype for the "mad scientist". Sivana was the first to figure out Shazam's identity, and has been a constant pest to the Big Red Cheese (as he prefers to call the broad-chested hero). He has been associated with the Monster Society of Evil and the Secret Society. He also had a son, Thaddeus Sivana, Jr., and a daughter, Georgia Sivana, who both resemble him.
In sharing some more details about SHAZAM!, Strong told Celebretainment.com that: "It's a funny film, it's about a young boy who can become a superhero but still remains a young boy so there's elements of 'Big' there's elements of 'Stranger Things'. I think originally the comic outsold 'Superman' in the 1940s."
Additionally, Strong also said that he's currently hard at work while preparing to take on as much of the stunt work as he possibly can for the movie. "I've been training like a mad man, I'm about to go over and see the stunt guys, I've been trying all of these harnesses on and I think I'm going to be doing lots of flying around and firing electricity out of my hands." Well, that certainly sounds like a fair bit of excitement for the 54-year-old actor, don't you think? I'll be excited to see just how much of the action Strong participates in, and in what manner his powers will be represented for the big screen adaptation.
Now that his involvement is confirmed, we can officially say that Mark Strong will be joining CHUCK actor Zachary Levi as the adult superhero and Asher Angel as young Billy Batson when SHAZAM! arrives in theaters on April 5, 2019. Are you excited for this movie? Are you pleased with DC's slate of films up until this point? Let us know in the comments section below.