As comic book movies continue to dominate at the box office and with buzz in the media, fans are constantly putting some of their favorite actors in the role of their favorite characters who have not yet joined these major franchises. It’s rare that those fan ideas come to fruition but it is a fun conversation and speculation. In the case of Dylan O’Brien, not only have fans online enjoyed discussing their ideas for him as Marvel’s Nova or DC’s Terry McGinnis version of Batman (among other ideas they have had), but the actor admits he has come a bit closer to taken on roles in those franchises than we might have thought.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I’ve flirted,” O’Brien says of the idea of playing a Marvel or DC Comics hero. “I’ve gone on a date with the idea, like one of those, like not bad first dates, but just like you know where it was fine and we haven’t called each other.”
While O’Brien didn’t outright say he has auditioned for roles and has firmly ruled out previous rumors of such an audition having been for Spider-Man, he did go into detail about why comic book movies aren’t a top priority for his work.
“If I’m being honest, like it’s not, that’s not something deeply like one of my gig things that I gig out about, you know what I mean?” O’Brien explained. “Like I just got my baseball, I geek about a lot of things, but I mean I don’t know it would just be like anything else really. If something I thought, I mean, I was obsessed, I definitely was obsessed with Spider-Man. Like I like loved Spider-Man growing up. My dad worked on that first Spider-Man movie, like Tobey Maguire one, and I like remember going to see it at my friend’s 10th birthday party. It was super cool because my dad had worked on it and it’s like that’s super, that’s deeply personal to me but I mean I don’t know anything else that would have to be like I thought it was cool or if I liked it.”
Regardless of which roles O’Brien might have considered or been considered for, comic book franchises or otherwise, there has never been an instance where he watched a film starring a different actor who got the part where he felt it was anything other than theirs.
“I can’t even like think of [a specific role I did not get] right now because I feel like it’s so common that that happens,” O’Brien explained. “But then it’s also just like, I don’t know, I saw it like when it’s that person’s movie it’s that person’s movie and so it then sort of never would have been yours or would have… I don’t know, I can’t ever process it, like I’ve never liked looking for those movies that I like auditioned for and I’m like, ‘Aw, I gotta see what…’ It’s just like once it doesn’t happen then that’s not your movie and you just like you just move on.”
O’Brien definitely did get the part in Love and Monsters, a film hitting on demand services this Friday in which his Joel character braves a terrifying outside world loaded with over-sized threats. Love and Monsters hits on demand services on October 16.
