Terry Crews Doesn't Want to Be Luke Cage

Terry Crews has a message to fans: Stop fan-casting him as Luke Cage in the movie in your head; it isn't going to happen. In a new interview promoting Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, the Expendables star said he's not interested in playing Power Man--although he's not quite sure why Marvel hasn't started moving a project like that forward. "I'm trying to take myself outta that running," Crews told Black Film when asked about the prospect of playing Luke Cage in a prospective Power Man or Iron Fist movie. "Because everybody's like, 'I want to play this superhero character, that superhero character'. I'd rather make up my own. Make a brand new one, you know. 'Blade' was basically a failed character. That comic book didn't do very well....I think everybody's is forcing this 'Power Man', Luke Cage thing. Man, it's obvious, Marvel, for some reason, is not getting down with it. He's being ignored. Hey man, he was probably in the Avengers. What can I say? You can't force it on him. The market's going to tell you what's going on. So apparently they felt like, 'we don't really have to.' I know they're bringing the Falcon in on one of these." By "We don't really have to," he presumably is referencing recent comments by Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, who said something similar to that about female characters. "The thing is, the women like these movies as much as the guys, so we don't have to knock ourselves out to find a female," Lee recently said, setting off a barrage of Internet criticism. Luckily for Marvel (if indeed they want to use Luke Cage and if Crews was on their radar), Cage is one of the most common characters for actors to fancast themselves, with at least three name actors in recent memory saying they'd like a shot at him.