Ever since it was announced that Deadpool 2 would be a team-up with Cable, there have been plenty of ideas about who should play the role of the time-traveling mutant with the bionic arm. From Stephen Lang to Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, there are a number of actors who have either nominated themselves or been nominated for the part.
But what if there were a man whose qualifications for the job included decades of experience as a leading man in action movies, including a Marvel superhero movie? Those qualifications could easily make him a top contender for the role. As it turns out, one such man has stepped forward to express his interest.
In an interview with Nerdist, former Punisher star Dolph Lundgren was asked if he saw himself returning to the Marvel universe as a different character. His response was that there was one character in particular who had caught his attention:
“That’s a good question. I haven’t watched a lot of these superhero movies; for some reason, I don’t know, I’m just busy making films. I did hear in… Deadpool, isn’t there a character named Cable that’s coming? Like, he’s a big guy? I guess I could kick some butt doing that, I suppose. We’ll see. When I saw the picture, he looks a little bit like Ivan Drago mixed with Gunner Jensen mixed with… I don’t know.”
Cable is an older man in the comics, despite being the son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor. Time travel has the tendency to make things confusing like that. Lundgren himself is 58 years old, which puts him in roughly the right age range. While his blond hair might not be the perfect match for the role, that’s nothing a simple dye job couldn’t fix. While his turn as the Punisher back in the late ’80s isn’t generally regarded as the most successful movie based on a Marvel character, it was also one of the earliest attempts, well before Marvel studios came into existence or Fox made the first X-Men movie.
So with his past superhero experience, as well as his having starred in more action movies than many people even get around to watching in their lifetimes, Lundgren could indeed be a legit contender for the role of Cable. On the other hand, most of his more recent work has been in the straight-to-video realm with movies such as The Good, the Bad, and the Dead and Kindergarten Cop 2. Neither film is poised to win any Oscars, and being relegated to movies most likely to appear in gas station bargain bins probably will not help Lundgren get taken seriously as a contender for a lead role in a movie as high profile as Deadpool 2.
Time will tell if Lundgren is called in to audition for the role that would put him opposite Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. For as long as that role goes unfilled, though, he will probably not be the last actor to express interest.
Deadpool is now available on Digital HD. X-Men: Apocalypse will open in U.S. theaters on May 27, 2016, followed by Wolverine 3 on March 3, 2017, and unannounced X-Men films on October 6, 2017 (possibly Gambit), January 12, 2018 (possibly Deadpool 2), and July 13, 2018 (possibly The New Mutants).
Source: Nerdist
