First he was in talks, then he wasn’t – now Deadline is reporting that Michael Keaton and Marvel/Sony have closed the deal and Keaton will be putting on the green wings.
From Deadline:
Michael Keaton, who in April was in early talks for a villainous role in the Sony-Marvel collaboration/reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming before falling out, is back in the mix again and we’ve been told his deal has closed. He apparently set to play iconic Spider-Man villain The Vulture and joins newly minted Spider-Man Tom Holland along with Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. who are also confirmed.
…
The Vulture’s first encounter with Spider-Man happens to be the in-universe reason Peter Parker got his most famous day job, freelance photographer for tabloid paper The Daily Bugle — Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson offered a reward to anyone who could get a picture of The Vulture. Further, The Vulture has long been tied to The Sinister Six, a supervillain team introduced in 1964 that was comprised of several enemies Spidey had consistently defeated. That means a potentially big role for Keaton within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Deadline isn’t a clickbait site; it’s an actual industry news site. So we give this one a lot of cred, but we’ll still wait until we hear from Marvel/Sony.
Hat tip to our very own Ashley!
EDIT: Another Hat Tip to Crawlspacer Mr_Fig, who commented on this thread to alert us to a tweet by Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts which shows a gif of a celebrating Keaton, which basically backs up Deadline’s reporting.
— Jon Watts (@jnwtts) May 20, 2016
—George Berryman!
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“What are you?!”
“I’m Bat…ahem…I’m Vulture!”
@#8 – You can even tie him into the MCU by retconning in Toomes as the person who designed the Falcon harness for Stark Industries.
Vulture isn’t a bad choice.
He’s weak enough that a newbie Spidey can defeat him, but tough enough that he will still stuggle.
He’s also a good baseline villain to pull from the thus far unused Spider-Man bad guys. Vulture’s powerset is unimpressive when you showcase him AFTER guys like Doc Ock, Electro, the Goblin etc. He’s strong and he flies that’s kind of it. Doing him first allows you to establish some things and organically build up your house of cards from there.
If this were a Sony only film, I would think we’d see Keaton vomiting acid on victims. Here’s hoping for the old man versus young kid story.
Toomes is one of Spidey’s few bad guys who isn’t half-crazy, which makes him more interesting to me.
If we must have the Vulture as a villain, at least this has the potential to be good.
Though I still really want to see big screen takes on Mysterio and Scorpion at some point.
@3 – “… I would be concerned that a mainstream audience wont accept an aging bald man with wings…”
It all depends on the strength of the writing and how they decide to portray Toomes.
Even though I’m not a huge Vulture fan, Keaton is awesome and seeing him face off against Spidey should be insanely meta considering his most famous roles… I would be concerned that a mainstream audience wont accept an aging bald man with wings, but the MCU has made them accept far sillier things at this point, plus we already have Falcon’s wings, I imagine they’ll find a way to connect the two. I guess we don’t know for sure yet that it is Vulture, though it would be fitting since he was the first proper supervillain Spidey faced who could put up a fight (If Chameleon were the only villain it would be a really short movie, though he could maybe appear for a cold open and faithfully adapt his original story, kickstarting the public seeing Spidey as a menace in the MCU) Considering how great Spidey’s rogues gallery is, I hope the MCU doesn’t screw around with them too much or make them bland and generic as they’re prone to do.
Look what Jon Watts just posted on twitter…
https://twitter.com/jnwtts/status/733769319394381826
With the supposed “script leaK’ reported a few days ago. I see more and more that Keaton could be Toomes. I always liked the villain and his motivations.