Jamie Foxx circling role of major villain for 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2'

In a conceivably shocking development*, Jamie Foxx is in preliminary negotiations to take on the role of the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, EW has confirmed. “Dressed up as Electro for Halloween last night,” Foxx tweeted out this afternoon. “Costume fits well.” (*Apologies for the pun.) Variety first broke the news.

In the Marvel comics, Maxwell “Max” Dillon is an engineer who gains the ability to control electricity after he’s struck by lightning, and becomes the supervillain Electro. The character hasn’t traditionally been African American, though snagging the Oscar-winning Foxx for the role would be in keeping with other recent color-blind casting for super hero films, like Laurence Fishburne as Perry White in Man of Steel, and Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor. (In Marvel’s alternate “Ultimate” universe, Spidey himself is now a mixed-race kid named Miles Morales.)

Foxx would face off against Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, who are returning to the second film along with director Marc Webb. Shailene Woodley still in talks to join the franchise as Peter Parker’s love interest Mary Jane Watson. The film is set to swing into theaters on May 2, 2014.

Variety is reporting the news, saying that Foxx has begun preliminary talks with Sony about taking on the role. The actor and studio have a fledgling relationship due to Sony distributing Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained internationally ( it stars Foxx); the actor will also star in Sony’s upcoming action flick White House Down, in which he play a U.S. president being protect by Channing Tatum’s secret service character.

For those who don’t know, Electro (real name Max Dillon) is a Spider-Man villain  dating back to 1964. He started as an electrical engineer who gained the powers of a human electrical capacitor due to a freak lighting strike. For the Amazing Spider-Man universe, however, we will probably see the origin story of Electro from the Ultimate Spider-Man continuity, in which his powers result from the sort of bioengineering that created The Lizard in the first film.
Electro Amazing Spider-Man 2

Of course, the big issue you will likely hear echoed across the Internet (ad nauseam) is that Electro is a white character – and Foxx is black. On the heels of the news that black UK actor Idris Elba could play James Bond, the issue of “trading races” when it comes to depictions of film characters has gotten pretty volatile. We’re not going to discuss it here, though; I’m sure the Interwebs at large will do that for us.

Amazing Spider-Man certainly left the door wide open for a sequel, with many questions about Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) past, and the machinations of Norman Osborn still waiting to be answered. Presumably, the story of Max Dillon will be factored into the larger mythos the rebooted franchise has been building – but we’ll have to wait and see the finer points of Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci’s (Star Trek Into Darkness) revision of James Vanderbilt’s (Zodiac) script to know how, exactly, the puzzle fits together.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be in theaters on May 2, 2014.



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Image Credit: Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic.com
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/11/01/jamie-foxx-electro-amazing-spider-man-2/
http://screenrant.com/amazing-spiderman-2-jamie-foxx-electro/