The cast of DC Universe’s upcoming Swamp Thing series is starting to come together, with key roles being filled out for the main characters in the new horror series.
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The series did secure actor Will Patton to play Avery Sunderland, but according to That Hashtag Show’s Charles Murphy, they also reached out to some major Hollywood talent for the role. The reporter states that Kurt Russell and Greg Kinnear were both approached for the role, but they ultimately turned it down.
DC offered the role of Avery Sunderland to Kurt Russell and Greg Kinnear before agreeing to terms with Will Patton.
— Charles Murphy (@CharlesMurphTHS) November 7, 2018
DC Universe and Warner Bros. has been swinging hard in their attempts to secure big names for original series, landing Brendan Fraser, Roger Dalton, and Matt Bomer for the upcoming Doom Patrol series. And while Russell or Kinnear would have been major gets for the series, they might have been distractions and taken away from the horror tone.
Swamp Thing is said to embrace the comic book’s horror roots from the seminal run by writer Alan Moore, who put the character on the map in the ’80s. Much like Titans, the series will be a mature, R-rated affair.
“This is one, when you talked earlier about the rating for The Nun, we always set out to make Swamp Thing as hard R as we could and go graphic with the violence, with the adult themes and make it as scary as possible,” producer Gary Dauberman said to /Film. “Because we’re doing it through the DC streaming service, they really pushed us, although they didn’t have to push hard, for us to go as extreme as we could. We really took our inspiration from the Alan Moore run in Swamp Thing, this landmark I think run. Fans of that series will know it gets pretty weird and extreme and scary. We really wanted to live up to that standard that Moore set up back in the ’80s.”
Swamp Thing follows Abby Arcane as she investigates what seems to be a deadly swamp-born virus in a small town in Louisiana but soon discovers that the swamp holds mystical and terrifying secrets. When unexplainable and chilling horrors emerge from the murky marsh, no one is safe.
The series is expected to debut on DC Universe sometime in 2018.
