After years of speculation over who he’d be playing in Ironheart, Sacha Baron Cohen got to be the entire heart of the show’s finale in his inaugural appearance as Mephisto. Years after this Marvel Comics fixture was speculated to be the big bad behind WandaVision, Mephisto made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the hands of the man behind Borat and The Dictator. For many viewers unaware he was going to appear in this show, it was likely an unspeakable shock to see such a comedic performer inhabiting a Marvel Comics villain.
However, the man who forever changed how people say the phrase “I like to move it” had long been connected to a Marvel Comics adaptation long before Mephisto was on anyone’s radar. Back in the 2010s, an offshoot of the X-Men film franchise once had big ambitions to bring aboard Cohen as a character that could’ve been the movie’s equivalent to Rocket Raccoon.
Who Could Sacha Baron Cohen Have Played In The New Mutants?
The New Mutants writer/director Josh Boone had grand plans for this horror movie offshoot of the X-Men movies. Adapting these cult favorite mutant superheroes would require an imaginative touch. Therefore, Boone’s creative flourish for the project was to make it a dark horror film dealing with matters like religious trauma. Despite those ambitions, Boone was eyeballing a comedy cinema veteran to play a potential breakout character in his trilogy of New Mutants movies. That was where Sacha Baron Cohen would’ve come in as the motion-capture performer and voice actor for the mechanical Warlock.
A robot mutant shapeshifter that came from outer space, Warlock is an incredibly weird creation even by the standards of Marvel mutant characters. This zany creation (ostracized by his alien species because he’s capable of caring for other organisms) was also one of the earliest members of the New Mutants team in the comics. It’s no wonder that in 2016, Boone announced that Warlock would be a lead character in his New Mutants movie.
Back when Warlock was set to be in the feature, Boone had conversations with Cohen about playing the character through motion-capture technology and standard voicework. Cohen was allegedly excited about the character, and casting a middle-aged man in the part would’ve imbued Warlock with an interestingly different personality compared to the younger New Mutants lead performers. Boone’s vision for this digital character was that Warlock could become The New Mutants‘ version of Gollum, a high bar suggesting the grand creative dreams Boone had for the project.
Why This Sacha Baron Cohen Casting Fell Apart
Though Boone was committed to Warlock and Cohen was interested in portraying him, the final New Mutants film didn’t even have a hint of the character. Boone explained that extreme budgetary restrictions meant that 20th Century Fox would only allow him to have one CG character in The New Mutants. Forced to pick either the villainous Demon Bear or Warlock, Boone opted to give the film a villain. If all had gone as planned, Boone would’ve saved Warlock for a potential New Mutants 2 that was informed by sci-fi horror.
The indecision and chaos surrounding the inclusion of Warlock in The New Mutants reflects what a tumultuous and nightmarish production this feature went through. Originally scheduled for an April 2018 release date, the film was subsequently delayed for two years allegedly over 20th Century Fox wanting to incorporate reshoots that would’ve overhauled the entire production. External factors like the Disney/Fox merger and the New Mutants cast naturally aging made those reshoots impossible. This was just one of many instances where creative indecision and corporate problems adversely affected what Josh Boone and company could accomplish here.
Those issues had a cascading effect that ended up costing the world the chance to see Warlock on the big screen and played by Sacha Baron Cohen to boot. Naturally, once this finale to the Fox era of X-Men movies opened in August 2020, it bombed so badly that New Mutants 2 was never going to happen. That pretty much closed the book on Sacha Baron Cohen inhabiting Warlock, but it also ensured he was available to play Mephisto in Ironheart years later. Who could’ve known, though, that the man behind Bruno almost intersected with Marvel Comics lore nearly a decade before Ironheart‘s debut?
The New Mutants and all episodes of Ironheart are now streaming on Disney+.
The post Sacha Baron Cohen Almost Played a Very Different Marvel Character Years Before Mephisto appeared first on ComicBook.com.
