Daniel Craig 'in talks' to play villain Mr. Sinister in Channing Tatum's Gambit

The Bond star may be taking on a less heroic role
Daniel Craig could play a Marvel villain
Ilya S. Savenok/Getty
Hanna Flint4 October 2017
The Weekender

Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and theatre ticket deals

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Daniel Craig is set to return as James Bond for a fifth time but his next rumoured role isn’t quite as heroic.

The British actor is reportedly being lined up to play the villain in Channing Tatum’s long-awaited Gambit movie.

According to Splash Report “conversations” have taken place to discuss the possibility of Craig playing Mr. Sinister, not just in the stand-alone film but in future X-Men outings too.

The villain, also knows as Nathaniel Essex, first appeared in the Marvel Comics in the late Eighties as an adversary to the X-Men.

He worked in Victorian London as a scientist who crossed ethical lines in order to develop superhuman powers including telepathy and telekinesis.

Mr Sinister is a supervillain in the Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics

The blog site also claims to know script details for Fox’s new stand-alone film.

“Gambit is hired to do a job in Paris in which he has to steal something from the Louvre Museum,” the website suggests. “His mysterious employer is revealed to be Nathaniel Essex a.k.a. Mr. Sinister. He offers Gambit 40 million to recover a mysterious trunk that was stolen by the Boudreaux clan.

“It will be auctioned off during the yearly Thieves Ball where all the criminal organizations in the world meet up. It uses New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebrations as a cover. Gambit decides to enlist a crew of mutants to pull off this seemingly impossible heist…”

Craig and Tatum recently worked together on the movie Logan Lucky, though The Wrap’s Umberto Gonzales claims the casting rumours for Gambit are false.

The next movies in Fox’s Marvel Universe to come out will be New Mutants in April next year and Deadpool 2 in June.

Craig will soon begin filming for Bond 25 after finally confirming his return during an interview with Stephen Colbert.

"We've been discussing it, we've just been trying to figure things out," he said. "I always wanted to, I needed a break."

Bond 25 is due out in November 2019

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in