Thomas Haden Church Says He’s Been Cast In A Superhero Film

In an interview with Joblo, Thomas Haden Church revealed that he’s been cast in a superhero film that is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film shot last year, but he offered no other details. Here are highlights:

On being cast in a new superhero movie: “I’m not supposed to talk about it, but I actually have returned, but not in the Marvel world, it’s another world, but it is in that genre of superheroes and supervillains. I’m not supposed to talk about it, it’s a movie I shot last year. They’re trying to keep it-and good luck to ‘em-with, y’know, today man, I’m surprised it hasn’t already kinda been revealed.”

On Spider-Man 3: “When I got into it, it was right on the heels of-I had gotten a tremendous amount of acclaim for this picture Sideways and Sam Raimi, Laura Ziskin, Kevin Feige and Avi Arad, called me to meet with all of them and sort of laid out the framework of a film. I was like, I know who you guys are and they’re like, we’re not really sure where we’re going and we just wanted to pitch some ideas to you about what you would be interested in doing. And, I knew, given those people, we must be talking really advanced talks about Spider-Man 3. And they were just sorta talking to me about different ideas they had and what would be appealing to me.

I was not that familiar with that world, but when they started talking about The Sandman and his story, I told them that’s appealing to me. That’s a guy that’s completely misunderstood and while the world regards him as villainous he’s actually on a mission that’s the purest of humanity. And that of course is a character that is immensely appealing to me. And they all just kind of looked at each other and said, “We feel the same way.” I kinda backed into it. And, yeah, we were in the early stages of putting together Spider-Man 3 and we feel that The Sandman, we want him to be the principal villain.” Although, it didn’t really turn out that way later on. Because, when they first pitched me the movie, Sandman and, of course, Franco’s transformation to the Goblin, we were who he [Spider-Man] had to deal with in the picture and Venom wasn’t even in it. They introduced at the very beginning the character of Vulture, but he was only in it briefly and then at the very end of that picture they were gonna bring The Vulture back just to sorta set the stage that he was probably going to be the main villain in Spider-Man 4. But then, obviously all of that stuff sort of derailed. Well, not so much derailed, but took a different railway.

The studio felt like they had me, they had Franco’s story continuing, and they were like, we need one more that’s more of a millennial. And that’s how Venom and Topher Grace came into the picture. And by the way, I thought Topher was great in the movie and Venom is a pretty scary animal. And that was the evolution of that. I was thrilled, man. I’m a big admirer of Sam Raimi’s, I love Tobey [Maguire] as an actor and it was right on the heels of getting so much attention for SIDEWAYS and then these people step up and offer me the villain in the next Spider-Man. And, I just liked everybody involved, I liked the script. Again, I didn’t know how it was going to change, but c’mon, I would’ve done the movie anyway. I liked the character a lot. I thought he was a challenge and it presented a whole other set of challenges, which is physically to transform myself to be Flint Marko, y’know, to be that guy, the way he was drawn and the way he was portrayed in the books. It was a big challenge and it went on for two years. They asked me to do it in January of 2005 and the movie didn’t come out until May of 2007, so it was a good two plus years of my own life.”

On the film’s negative reputation: “I’m very proud of it. Even Sam [Raimi] has gone on record as saying, “Hey we tried to shove ten pounds of story into a five-pound bag.” Even he thought it was just too much. And, to some extent it led to Sam and Sony to part ways. Sam’s production company is still set up there and he’ll always have a home at Sony, but on that particular franchise they parted ways. I think that Sam could come back to it if he was really interested if it doesn’t so far past him, y’know. Sam is only like a year or two older than me. Sam’s got plenty of energy and creative fuel and if they ever invited Sam to come back and do another one, I think he’d consider it, I do.”