Early on in Spider-Man: Homecoming‘s exhaustive casting process, it almost became difficult to keep track of all the many Hollywood stars – both young up-and-comers and bona fide veterans – who sealed their place in Marvel and Jon Watts’ imminent reboot.
From Zendaya to Donald Glover, Michael Keaton to Marisa Tomei, Homecoming‘s cast is arguably one of the most impressive ever assembled for a Marvel tentpole – and we’ve only just scratched the surface. After some back-and-forth, Keaton signed on to play Adrian Toomes (AKA The Vulture), the primary villain facing Tom Holland’s sprightly Web-Head.
Equipped with cutting-edge tech pulled from the rubble of the Battle of New York, Toomes heads up a posse of engineers who work together under Damage Control. Soon after their company is shuttered though, Michael Keaton’s big bad plots revenge, and he won’t do so alone. By his side is Michael Chernus as The Tinkerer, and Empire (via CBM) has now unveiled our first look at Chernus suited and booted. He’s a character who dabbles in black market weaponry, and the image below finds The Tinkerer and The Vulture testing out some head gear.
Here’s what Spider-Man: Homecoming producer Eric Carroll had to say about Phineas Mason and his nefarious motives:
That puts him in a pretty desperate situation. So with one of the trucks they’ve already loaded up, he and his crew, with the help of a character called The Tinkerer, start stealing more of this exotic tech – Chitauri, Dark Elf, and even some Stark stuff – to retro-fit and sell on the black market.
Spider-Man: Homecoming makes a beeline for theaters on July 7th, and the preliminary box office forecast claims Jon Watts’ reboot is well on its way to becoming yet another box office smash for Marvel. Going one step further, analysts predict Homecoming will write its name in the history books as the “largest non-sequel and non-Avengers opening in MCU history” with a $135 million opening weekend in North America. Mind you, that’s just shy of Spider-Man 3‘s domestic debut ($151 million), but there’s no question that Marvel has a slam-dunk on its hands when it comes to Tom Holland’s first solo outing.