Kevin Bacon Is James Gunn's Villainous Drug Dealer In Super

What happened to Kevin Bacon? Back in the '90s he was a huge star, doing movies like Tremors, A Few Good Men and Apollo 13, but sometime in the past decade he kind of fell off the map, only showing up for roles in major films every few years, like Mystic River and Frost/Nixon. The most notable thing he's done in the past year was losing all of his money to Bernie Madoff. Perhaps that was for the best though, because now he needs to make his money back, and what better way than to have a major role in a superhero flick?

...Kind of. Screen Daily has discovered that Bacon has joined the cast of James Gunn's superhero comedy Super, which is currently filming in Louisiana. Bacon will play the film's main baddie, a slick drug-dealer named Jacques who gets a gets a woman hooked on drugs, forcing her husband (Rainn Wilson) to don a costume and get her back.

As much as I appreciate the work of Bacon, Wilson and Gunn (his screenplay for Dawn of the Dead was fantastic and Slither is highly underrated), this movie is going to have a hard time keeping its head above water after Kick-Ass is released in April. The film looks promising, with Ellen Page and Liv Tyler making up the female half of the cast, but will not be able to avoid comparisons to the Matthew Vaughn flick, which will have been out for a few months before Super hits theaters. I will say this though: if it looks like a good movie, I'll be there opening weekend.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.