It looks as though Jon Hamm almost played X-Men villain, Mr. Sinister, but never got as far as shooting anything.
During an interview with Yahoo! the former Mad Men star admitted that he was once in talks for the role of Mr. Sinister in a now-defunct sequel to The New Mutants. Director Josh Boone was originally planning to tease Mr. Sinister in a post-credit scene in the original New Mutants, but Hamm admits it never got that far:
“I never shot anything,” he revealed. “I remember having a conversation with people: I'm a huge comic book fan, especially of the X-Men and The New Mutants, so I was excited to be considered. But these conversations happen and then life intervenes.”
Unfortunately, a sequel to The New Mutants never happened, and following the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, it looks as though any plans or ideas to turn The New Mutants into a franchise have long been scrapped. After all, it performed poorly at the box office following numerous delays, eventually earning just $49.1 million globally.
Mr. Sinister first appeared in Marvel comic books in 1987, in The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #221 – unveiled as the mysterious employer of the shadowy assassins known as the Marauders.
He began as a 19th-century scientist, born Nathaniel Essex, but his backstory is a tragic one. A biologist obsessed with survival of the fittest and Darwin’s theory of evolution, he begins working with genetics after the death of his child to a genetic disorder.
Eventually, he enters into an alliance with Apocalypse, who subjects him to a painful genetic transformation to turn him into Mr. Sinister – an ageless being with chalk-white skin and the use of telekinetic abilities.
It’s not the first-time 20th Century Fox had planned to introduce Mr. Sinister to the X-Men franchise. After all, he was supposed to make an appearance in Channing Tatum’s Gambit solo film.
“We had a tease of it at the end of Apocalypse,” said Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg. “The Essex Corp is something that you see in a tag at the end of Apocalypse. We had talked about doing something with him, and I won't get into the specifics of it since it's no longer a 20th Century Fox property and now it's part of the MCU. I have no idea what the plan is. But Mister Sinister was going to be part of the Gambit movie starring Channing Tatum.”
Again, that never came to be, and it’s unclear what plans, if any, Marvel has for the villain.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
