The Wrap reports that British martial artist/actor Scott Adkins has joined the growing cast of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, his role isn’t known but it’ll be interesting to see who he does end up playing.
Some are suggesting he’ll play a villain or possibly Stephen Strange’s friend and bodyguard Wong. There’s another potential option according to rumors that were circling earlier this year.
Back in the Spring it was suggested that Doctor Strange was actually going to be introduced in the Iron Fist series on Netflix, that doesn’t seem to be the case as the film is shooting and we still haven’t heard any solid news concerning the Fist series, or even getting creatives to write it. The two are actually apart of the modern Defenders lineup, so it’s not crazy to think this was going to happen.
It’s possible that we may see Fist introduced in the Doctor Strange film, due to his more mystical origin, which could use a boost from a film like this and we’ve been hearing Marvel is super keen on team-up projects.
Then again, the rumor did originate from Bleeding Cool, who have also stated the Fist series is getting scrapped all together, which from what I hear isn’t exactly the case. It’s possible that Danny Rand could have a big screen debut, but this doesn’t mean any sort of cancellation of his solo Netflix series.
That crossover could have been switched to give Fist more of a larger introduction first not the other way around, but this is sort of my own speculation. The delay of the Netflix series might actually have more to do with having Iron Fist show up in a Marvel film first, which might also explain the “chatter” of Fist getting a film and the series getting scrapped. We don’t expect to see the Fist series released before Doctor Strange, so that kind of makes sense to us.
All that considered it’s interesting to think that Adkins might play a known Marvel character, after doing a majority of the wirework for Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson/Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Scott had also been championed to be in the mix to play the new Batman for Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman, which did actually lead to him meeting with the director.
Adkins has been apart of a growing fan-favorite list to play Daniel Rand, and he does have multiple features streaming on Netflix with him in the heroic lead and not playing the villain. It’s possible he could taking less of a villain role in the film, but let’s wait and see for sure. Seeing him headline a Netflix series alongside Mike Colter, wouldn’t be crazy to see and we do expected someone with martial arts experience landing the role.
Although, casting a white actor as Wrong role could mean they might end-up looking at Asian-American actors to play Fist. As we’ve suggested actors like Daniel Wu (Warcraft, Into The Badlands) should be considered. However, considering the lack of representation of Asian characters in the cinematic universe, I’d hope to see Wong is actually played by an Asian actor as well.
SOURCE: THE WRAP