Javier Bardem attends a special screening of "The Counselor" on Oct. 3, 2013, in London
It makes total sense that Javier Bardem has been offered the villain role in the upcoming Warner Bros. Peter Pan movie, a decision Deadline recently reported. The movie — not to be confused with Sony’s Pan or Disney’s Peter and the Starcatchers — is an origin story based on the mythology created by J.M. Barrie. And after all, Bardem has had great success recently (eg. Skyfall) in bad-guy roles opposite classic good guys.
Here’s what’s more surprising: that Peter Pan villain that Bardem may play is not Captain Hook. It’s Blackbeard. Per Deadline‘s description, that famous pirate leads the evil Neverland buccaneers against whom an orphan mounts a rebellion.
(MORE: Javier Bardem on Becoming a Bond Villain and Why He’d Make a Terrible Spy)
Or maybe that choice of bad guy isn’t so weird after all. As The Mary Sue points out, Hook and Blackbeard are meant to have connecting origins — Captain Hook was, according to Barrie’s original Peter and Wendy, “Blackbeard’s bo’sun” and the only man of whom Long John Silver is afraid. That connection suggests that the WB film may not be an origin story for Peter alone. In fact, the story description’s studied use of “an orphan” rather than “Peter” leaves open the possibility that the parentless youth who goes against Blackbeard doesn’t necessarily have to be Peter.
And though Peter Pan is often described as an orphan — in Peter and the Starcatchers, the book that’s becoming another Pan movie, for example — Barrie’s original backstory for the boy is not so straightforward. When he appears in Barrie’s 1902 The Little White Bird, Peter willfully escapes “from being a human” by flying through a window at his parents’ house at the age of seven days. Little is known of Hook’s youth, except that he went to Eton.
As for Blackbeard, on the other hand, much is known. He was, after all, a real person, Edward Teach. In the 18th century, Blackbeard roamed the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast aboard ships like the Queen Anne’s Revenge. His beard is said to have started right under his eyes and to have been braided, as was the rest of his hair. When it came time to attack a ship, he would take fuses or matches and weave them into his hair; when lit they would surround him with smoke. The actual boatswain in his crew at the time of his death in 1718, however, was a man named Garrat Gibbens.
No word yet on crocodile casting.