Home Rumour: Jaden Smith to star in DC's STATIC SHOCK?

Rumour: Jaden Smith to star in DC's STATIC SHOCK?

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The search for an actor to play Marvel’s new Spider-Man continues! And if that opening sentence has you thinking that you accidentally clicked on the wrong superhero related article, don’t worry. You’re in the right place. It’s just that as a byproduct of Marvel finding their new young webslinger, we may just have unearthed some info about what the competition is doing regarding adolescent superheroes.

The fact that Marvel head Kevin Feige has unequivocally stated that the new Spider-Man will definitely be Peter Parker and not his Ultimate Universe counterpart Miles Morales has seemingly not deterred fans one bit from hoping that it will in fact be Morales who actually swings into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War. And the young actor who many rumours have pegged as being the one to bring Morales to life is The Walking Dead actor Tyler James Williams.

While appearing on Flicks and the City, Williams was asked about this – or more specifically, which superhero he would like to play –  Williams was very non-committal about this, saying that he doesn’t know which way Marvel is going. And then he seemingly just dropped this little nugget into the conversation.

“There are some [heroes] in particular, some that I can’t necessarily talk about because I know its kind of still up in the air, but there aren’t many young black comic book superheroes… it’s great to see Static Shock is happening with Jaden.”

Who the what now? Now Jaden Smith has been rumoured to be attached to a DC Comics property for a while now, so it could be that Williams is just repeating what he’s heard online, or it could be that he knows something that we don’t know. With his dad Will Smith now officially in the DC movie universe playing Deadshot in Suicide Squad, this actually gains some plausibility as we’ve already seen how much Smith senior pushes to get his kids gigs.

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And despite the fact that Jaden is often the punchline of my jokes due to his unintentionally hilarious social media philosophizing, he’s actually not the worst choice for Static aka Virgil Hawkins, as there is a definite physical resemblance. The character was created in the 90’s as part of DC’s Milestone imprint – which looked to spotlight more minority characters – as “a contemporary version of Spider-Man”. Virgil was a witty, 15-year old inner city comic book geek who gained electromagnetic abilities when he accidentally gets infected with an experimental chemical during a local gang war. The character was immensely popular, and when Milestone went under in 1997, Warner Bros created an animated show about him called Static Shock which ran for four seasons. Eventually, after the multiverse spanning events of the “Final Crisis” comic book crossover, Static would get incorporated into the main DC comic book universe and would even join the Teen Titans alongside Robin, Superboy, Wonder Girl and more.

Don’t get your hopes up on seeing those costumed youngsters on the big screen though, because if you recall, WB had planned to do Static Shock as an online digital series. Seeing as how the last time Jaden Smith led a movie, it was the disastrous After Earth, he could definitely maybe me more at home on a smaller online platform. As long as he doesn’t start talking about blue trees and cupcakes falling from Jupiter.

Here’s the full interview with Tyler James Williams:

Last Updated: May 27, 2015

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