Photo Credit: DC Comics, Warner Bros.
Following a not-so-subtle tease from James Gunn that Brainiac will be the main villain in the next DCU Superman movie, titled Man of Tomorrow, one obvious question arises: Who should play him?
There are some names being thrown around that typically come up whenever a superhero movie is searching for its villain: Giancarlo Esposito, Mads Mikkelsen, Cillian Murphy, Ben Mendelsohn, etc. All good actors. All of them would be good in the role. But they’re actors who we’ve seen do this kind of thing before.
So, let’s take things a step further and examine five others who could star as DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures’ Brainiac in Man of Tomorrow.
Our top picks to play Brainiac in Superman 2
Dave Bautista
Dave Bautista has repeatedly said that he wants to be a part of Gunn’s DCU. The Peacemaker role was originally written for him, but that didn’t work out. Many have fan-casted him as Bane or Hugo Strange — Brainiac, however, could give Bautista a chance to flex some different kind of acting muscles. Bautista is a tough-looking actor. He makes us laugh in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. But picture him just as a super cold, calculating villain who even Lex Luthor can’t reason with. Could be glorious.
Bradley Cooper
We briefly saw Bradley Cooper as Jor-El in 2025’s Superman. But consider this, for a second: What if we didn’t see Bradley Cooper as Jor-El in 2025’s Superman? What if we actually saw Bradley Cooper as Brainiac, who is merely pretending to be Jor-El, in 2025’s Superman? That’d certainly back up some theories regarding the message that Jor-El left for his son. Maybe Gunn was setting up Cooper’s Brainiac casting longer than any of us initially realized.
Lee Pace
It’s no secret that Gunn likes to cast people that he’s worked with before. So what about Lee Pace, who played Ronan the Accuser in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie? His MCU villain may not be the best-written character ever made, but Pace is certainly menacing in that role. Now, imagine they got him to tap back into that kind of performance before they crank it up to an 11. Yeah. That’d be awesome.
Jon Hamm
Jon Hamm has been open about wanting to play the X-Men villain Mister Sinister for years. Is Marvel ever going to let him do it? Who knows. If it ever happens, it could realistically be another five to ten years before that ever comes to fruition. So, what if we went to the DCU instead? He’s got the acting chops to make a good Brainiac, and it’d certainly be fun to finally see him play a comic book villain who is nothing but evil.
Austin Butler
He’s an actor who is very much in demand right now, but tell me you wouldn’t get excited if they announced that Man of Tomorrow was going to be David Corenswet’s Superman and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor battling Austin Butler’s Brainiac. There’s a whole lot of fun that could be had with that. And we already know Butler would crush it because he already played a great, scary sci-fi villain in Dune: Part Two.
