Bryan Cranston Says He Still Wants To Play X-Men’s Mister Sinister

Two years ago, X-Men: Apocalypse‘s post-credits scene promised that one of the meanest X-Men villains, Mr. Sinister, would be making his way to the big screen soon. Well, it’s been two years and Nathan Essex has yet to appear – though Deadpool 2 once again reminded us with a neat easter egg that he’s still out there somewhere.

The frustrating thing about Fox’s reluctance to give us the character is that the perfect actor for the part has long made it clear that they’d be interested in the role. We’re talking about Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston, of course, who advocated for the part a whole year before Apocalypse was even in cinemas.

ScreenGeek caught up with the actor at New York Comic Con recently and asked him what supervillain he’d like to play in a movie, and here was his reply:

“I want to  play an antagonist a fraction smarter than the protagonist, never dumbed down to give the hero an easy win. That’s frustrating and boring to watch.”

SG then suggested that Mr. Sinister would fit this bill, which led Cranston to admit that Essex was exactly the character he had in mind with that description.

“Actually, that was the character, I’ll admit. Mister Sinister was the character I was thinking about.”

As for why he’s so interested in the possibility of playing the Marvel villain, Cranston explained that it’s the novelty of portraying a character that’s never been tackled on screen before that does it for him. He even referenced a role we know he passed up on – Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s Commissioner Gordon.

“I guess it’s a selfish standpoint. I don’t want to do a character that has been done several times before. I don’t want to be compared like “well, his Commissioner Gordon was yada yada yada” . I don’t want to do that. I want to take something that hasn’t been done.”

So, could Cranston get his wish of playing Sinister in a future X-Men movie? Well, it’s tough to say right now, as the whole future of the franchise is fuzzy due to the Disney/Fox merger. Reportedly, the villain was going to show up in The New Mutants as played by Jon Hamm, until his cameo was nixed for unknown reasons. So there might be hope yet.