Donald Glover attends the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.
Donald Glover is finally ready for his Spider close-up.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the ‘Community’ veteran and ‘Atlanta’ creator/star is on board to star in and produce a currently untitled movie featuring obscure ‘Spider-Man’ villain the Hypno-Hustler.
So who is this little-known baddie? Created by Bill Mantlo (who also created Rocket Racoon, who has gone on to be a key part of Marvel’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movies), and artist Frank Springer, Hypno-Hustler was a disco-era character who first appeared in ‘Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man’ No. 24 in 1978. His real name was Antoine Delsoin, the leader of a band called the Mercy Killers and used hypnosis technology in his instruments on his audience in order to rob them.
It doesn’t sound like the source material for the greatest cinematic villain, but in Glover’s hands it should be something fun––he’s not a creative type who sticks to the basics.
The new Spider-Universe movie is at an early stage right now; it doesn’t have an announced title but we do know who hatched the idea to turn the character into a movie: Myles Murphy, the son of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy, is on board to write the project.
Glover’s history with ‘Spider-Man’ stretches back at least a decade, though. His ‘Community’ character Troy was seen wearing Spider-Man pajamas in the episode “Anthropology 101”. Fans jumped on the idea that he could be ideal to play Miles Morales in a future Spidey films.
(L to R) Donald Glover and Tom Holland in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming.’
Their hopes were not realized––at least, on the live-action front––as Andrew Garfield was cast as Peter Parker in 2012’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’.
Still, Glover did get to play Miles, albeit in voice form, in TV series ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ in 2015.
And while the live-action cinematic Spider-universe stayed Parker-central with 2017’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming,’ Glover appeared briefly as a character named Aaron David, who Spidey encountered while the man was trying to by advanced weapons from the Vulture’s crew. A deleted scene from the movie suggested that Aaron was Miles Morales’ uncle (Mahershala Ali voiced the character more officially in ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’).
This is the latest development in Sony’s ever-expanding batch of movies based in the world of the web-slinger, even if most of them won’t feature the (Spider) man himself.
With two ‘Venom’ films and ‘Morbius’ already out in the world, the future for Sony is certainly entangled in a web. Movies on the way include ‘Kraven the Hunter’, due October 6th next year, followed by ‘Madame Web’ on February 16th, 2024. In development, meanwhile, are ‘El Muerto’, a third ‘Venom’ and a slate of TV series set in the same universe.
Marvel Comics’ Hypno-Hustler. Photo courtesy of Marvel.com.
