This just in – apparently, Matt Damon has passed on playing the villain in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming 2, or whatever it’s ultimately going to be titled.
The scoop comes from Jeff Sneider of Meet the Movie Press, who says that there’s been buzz about Damon joining the pic for a couple of weeks now but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’ll be happening. There’s also no word on who exactly he would have played – we just know that it would’ve been the antagonist.
Frankly, this is pretty surprising to hear. Not that appearing in Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 would have been Damon’s first brush with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, mind you. He dropped by Asgard for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as an actor playing Loki in last year’s Thor: Ragnarok. Perhaps Marvel Studios hoped that that tiny role could lead to a bigger partnership between the two? Whatever the case, it just wasn’t meant to be, it seems.
In the past, Matt Damon has been asked about the chances of signing up for a superhero franchise several times and has always maintained that it would take the right director to coax him into joining the genre. For instance, he’s said he would jump at the chance if it involved working with either The Dark Knight‘s Christopher Nolan or his old pal Ben Affleck. So perhaps the opportunity to collaborate with Homecoming‘s Jon Watts just wasn’t enough of an incentive?
Though we can count Damon out of the running to play the villain in the sequel, the fact that he was courted in the first place could help give us an idea as to which of the wallcrawler’s many enemies has been chosen to feature in the film. That said, Homecoming showed it wasn’t afraid to totally change established characters, so trying to guess who the actor was being eyed for might be a bit futile.
Tom Holland’s webslinger will face off against whoever steps into Matt Damon’s shoes when Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 hits cinemas on July 5th, 2019.
