Barring some unforeseen change of heart, Jake Gyllenhaal has been cast as Peter Parker’s new nemesis ahead of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
His name? Quentin Beck, the deranged genius better known as Mysterio. He’s arguably one of the greatest villains ever to emerge from Marvel’s rogues gallery, so you can imagine our excitement when an actor of Gyllenhaal’s caliber came attached to such a flawed, yet deeply intriguing character.
Granted, the studio is yet to officially announce Jake Gyllenhaal, though if the back-and-forth from Michael Keaton’s Homecoming casting taught us anything, it’s that this deal is likely to close – frankly, it’s only a matter of time.
But as ComicBook.com soon discovered during Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s press junket, Marvel boss Kevin Feige still refuses to be drawn about the possible addition of the actor.
Well, I mean, sure, let the speculation begin. That’s always fun. We like [the title] of course because it ties into Homecoming, not just keeping that word going, which we like and we liked it more than Homecoming 2, but that notion of ‘home’ is a word that has dual meanings we’d like to continue with this [Marvel Cinematic Universe] version of Spider-Man. So, Far From Home has multiple meanings.
Far From Home has multiple meanings, then. It also shares more in common with Ant-Man and the Wasp than we initially thought, as Spider-Man’s next standalone adventure will be intricately connected to the events that transpire in Avengers 4 – hardly surprising, really, considering they’re expected to redraw the parameters of the entire MCU.
Feige continued:
Much like [Ant-Man and The Wasp], there are things that people know about that movie, which is a great deal of the movie: the villain of the movie, the storyline of the film, that we’re shooting in Europe and that Peter Parker goes on continuing that [Captain America: Civil War] was a big giant superhero class movie. The fallout of that in Homecoming was John Hughes and him going to his high school. So that’s what’s fun to us about the Spider-Man movies. And again going from Infinity War to Ant-Man and the Wasp, the tonal shift. So, there’s a lot of fun stuff. How it connects, where it connects, when it takes place, very similar to Ant-Man and the Wasp in that we’re not gonna say right now.
Spider-Man: Far From Home has been penciled in for release on July 5th, 2019 – with or without Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio.