Kingsley Ben-Adir Eyed For Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ With Sam Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn
It seems Kingsley Ben-Adir could be heading for a ‘Secret Invasion‘, as reports land that the Brit actor could be joining Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn in Marvel’s upcoming series.
The crossover event series, which is based on the popular comic book event, will see Samuel L. Jackson reprise his role as Nick Fury alongside Ben Mendelsohn as the Skrull Talos, who first met in ‘Captain Marvel’, and last saw hanging out on a space ship at the end of ‘Spider-man: Far From Home’. According to Deadline, who first revealed the news, Ben-Adir is set to play the lead villain in the piece, although, Marvel (being Marvel…) have refused to comment.
Kingsley Ben-Adir is someone whose star has been on the rise for the last few years, so much so, he was nominated for a Bafta Rising Star award this year. Most recently he has starred as Mohammad Ali in Regina King’s critically acclaimed directorial debut ‘One Night in Miami’, and prior to that, played Barack Obama in Showtime’s mini-series, ‘The Comey Rule’. He has also had roles on shows such as ITV’s ‘Vera’, Hulu’s ‘High Fidelity’, Fox’s ‘Deep State’, Netflix’s beloved drama ‘The OA’, and the wonderful ‘Peaky Blinders’.
For those of you unfamiliar with the comic book story, the plot follows a subversive, long-term invasion of Earth by the shape-shifting Skrulls race. In fact, they had replaced a number of Earth’s superheroes over an extended period, prior to an overt invasion, including Elektra, Black Bolt, Spider-Woman, and Hank Pym. The comic book crossover event featured a huge array of Marvel’s heroes, however, much like ‘Civil War’, the tv show is likely to be somewhat smaller in scope regarding the number of characters involved. Even so, MCU boss Kevin Feige commented that the longer format of a tv series, as opposed to a two-hour movie, would allow them to really play with the paranoia involved with not knowing who to trust.
“We’re interested in the political paranoia aspect of Secret Invasion and really showcasing the stars with Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, two amazing actors that you want to have in any series, and we’re very lucky to have them for that,” commented Feige in an interview with Collider back in January. “That’s the sort of primary focus of that and, of course, it will tie into other things and the Skrulls in ways you haven’t seen before, but yes, anything could be anything. Wise words… But we wanted to do that as a series because it would allow us to do something different than we’ve done before.”
‘Secret Invasion‘ is currently planned to begin filing in April 2021, although we don’t know exactly when it’ll premiere or where it’ll fit into the various upcoming Marvel TV and film projects. ‘Captain Marvel 2’, which so far has been the bit of the MCU most closely related to Skrulls, is set to land in November 2022, so it’s possible this may tie into that in some way, but we’ll have to wait and see.
