The X-Men Character Shaq Wanted To Play In The First Movie
Shaquille O'Neal will always be remembered as one of the world's best basketball players, but the man has also dipped his toes into plenty of other pursuits over the years, including acting. In his NBA heyday, he also left his performing mark either cameoing as himself or leading movies like Kazaam and Steel. Okay, so not quite the best acting resume. Anyway, during the late 1990s, the first X-Men movie was also in development, and when casting was still underway, Shaq was hoping to play Bishop.
In an extensive interview with THR, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter talked about some of the actors who came in to audition for the movie. Highlights included Terence Stamp and Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson) for Professor X, Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey for Storm, and Viggo Mortensen for Wolverine. Shaq, though, left a special imprint on Hayter when he came in. When asked who Shaq wanted to play, Hayter responded:
At a time when the biggest X-Men stories available outside of the comics themselves were episodes from the '90s animated series, Shaq knowing about Bishop is a deep cut. Since David Hayter didn't know about Bishop at the time, it sounds like Shaq wasn't so much responding to a casting call as he was just visiting where work was being done on X-Men and seeing if he'd have any luck petitioning to play Bishop. I can't help but wonder what might have happened if Hayter was familiar with Bishop then. Maybe that would have led to the character's inclusion, and while that still wouldn't have guaranteed that Shaq obtained the role, given the basketball star's popularity, maybe he could have at least cameoed.
Introduced to the comics in 1991, Bishop (full name Lucas Bishop) is a mutant with the ability to absorb and redirect energy. Hailing from a future where mutants have been placed in concentration camps, Bishop traveled back in time to prevent the X-Men from being killed, which kicked off the sequence of events that created the apocalyptic period he originally lived in. Bishop was eventually played by Omar Sy in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but because he was a minor player in the movie's dark future, we didn't learn anything about his past. All we saw him do was make good use of his energy powers until he was killed by a Sentinel. Now that the timeline has been reset, it's anyone's guess where he is in the X-Men cinematic universe.
The X-Men franchise continues next with Logan, which hits theaters across the U.S. starting tonight.
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Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.