Some of us were a little underwhelmed when we heard that NARCOS’ Boyd Holbrook was going to be the key baddie in WOLVERINE 3, Jackman’s big sendoff to the character that singlehandedly made him a global superstar. Nothing against the guy, just seemed a little low-fi for the last big-screen Wolvie flick for a while.
But hearing that Richard E. Grant will also play a villain, a “mad scientist” type, definitely takes the sting off a little bit.
There’s nothing more specific than “villainous mad-scientist type”, but that’s more than enough to sense why Grant would be a perfect fit. He played, magnificently over-the-top I might add, a mad-scientist type in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, and has swung for the fences as more freak characters than I’d care to list (though WITHNAIL & I, HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING, and HUDSON HAWK probably deserve special mention). He’s one of those guys who still, as proven in 2014's DOM HEMINGWAY, can still go big and hilarious within the confines of an appropriate setting, and ideally, a WOLVERINE movie is as good a chance to go big, baroque, and wild as any.
Now, there’s always the chance he’s going to come and go quite quickly, like Reynolds in ORIGINS or something, and that we don’t have a name for the character yet doesn’t look to good for Grant’s screentime (though that’s also attributed to the fact that we know very little about the plot of this thing). But Grant’s one of those guys who can do a lot with a little, but more with a lot, so the idea that he’s in WOLVERINE 3 at all definitely falls into the category of “Cool News.”
Any previously-unseen X-characters you’d peg Grant for?
WOLVERINE 3 will have a scene in THRONE IN BLOOD with exactly the same texture on March 3rd, 2017.
