Brian Tee (Jurassic World, The Wolverine, Tokyo Drift, We Were Soldiers), who plays Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel is now seemingly campaigning for the role of Namor aka The Sub-Mariner.
He revealed his interest while speaking with Entertainment Tonight (via Comic Book).
“This is what: Just saying, Marvel Studios just picked up the rights to Namor, who is the Submariner, and I would love to play the Submariner. I grew up as a comic geek and the Submariner is one of my childhood’s fondest superheroes. I feel like I can play him! If there is one role, right now, that I would love to play, it would be Namor.”
Keep in mind we don’t know for sure Namor is back at Marvel, as Joe Quesada has messed-up in the past commenting on the Namor film rights before, only to have Feige correct this mistake in the press.
Until we hear different from Kevin Feige, we should assume Universal still has control on the solo film.
Marvel has been the target of not having enough diverse superhero leads. Even more so, when it comes to Asian and Latino leading roles. There had been a campaign to have an Asian-American play Daniel Rand in the Iron Fist series on Netflix.
Having an Asian actor like Tee (Japanese and Korean background) taking a larger feature role like Namor, might be a huge win for champions of seeing an Asian superhero finally joining the MCU.
It doesn’t hurt Brian has already worked on a Marvel film playing Noburo Mori in James Mangold’s The Wolverine.
We already mentioned our wish-list for Namor, which included both Asian and Latino actors, such as Oscar Isaac, Keanu Reeves, Rick Yune and Edgar Ramirez.
SOURCE: ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT