Idris Elba’s Return To Fan-Favorite Role Teased By Director
Please let it be true!
It’s a good year to be an Idris Elba fan. The Netflix original Luther movie is expected to stream by the end of the year, the trailer for George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing looks amazing, and in April Elba helped make Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a resounding success by supplying the voice of Knuckles. But some fans are looking just a little bit backwards to a role they want him to return to — namely, the part of Robert DuBois aka Bloodsport in last year’s The Suicide Squad. As usual, writer/director James Gunn is having a good time teasing fans with the possibilities.
Just a couple of hours ago, James Gunn — unprompted by any other Twitter users — posted a shot of Idris Elba as Bloodsport walking through the rubble of Corto Maltese. He captioned it with “Supervillain walks alone #Bloodsport #The SuicideSquad.” When a fan responded with “Will we see him again?” Gunn was characteristically teasing, responding, “That would be nice wouldn’t it?” You can see that exchange below.
In spite of numerous fans seeing Gunn’s response and urging him to announce any new development, the director of course didn’t get into any details, but there are plenty of directions to go with speculation. For one, back in January Gunn confirmed a Giant Freakin Robot exclusive, that he had at least one more The Suicide Squad spin-off series under development for HBO Max. Considering the relatively small number of characters who actually survive the film, the choices for who beside Peacemaker (John Cena) would star in a spin-off are fairly limited. A Bloodsport series starring Idris Elba would seem like a natural candidate. Solo series for Weasel or King Shark would seem unlikely considering the inherent dialogue limitations. And we’re not sure if anyone’s going to green light a TDK series.
Besides spin-offs, at some point we can expect a sequel to The Suicide Squad, and fans would naturally want Idris Elba back for that. While The Suicide Squad ends with Bloodsport and the other surviving members of Task Force X freeing themselves from Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) control, you could say the same about Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) at the end of 2016’s Suicide Squad, and yet she found her way back in Waller’s group.
Idris Elba’s portrayal of Bloodsport strays quite a bit from the source material. When the character first appeared in 1987’s Superman #4 he does indeed wound the Man of Steel with a Kryptonite bullet, but he’s no mercenary like the version in The Suicide Squad. In the source material he begins as a mass shooter, ranting about all the sacrifices he made in Vietnam while killing people. By the end of his introductory story you learn that, in fact, DuBois was a draft dodger who went mad with guilt when his younger brother went to Vietnam in his place, was wounded in battle, and was wheelchair bound from his injuries.
For the time being there’s no way to know exactly when and where we’ll see Idris Elba appear as Bloodsport, but we know when to next expect the actor on the big screen. On August 19 he’ll star in Baltasar Kormákur’s Beast when he’ll play a father protecting his daughters from a rogue lion. Not quite two weeks later he’ll appear as a Djinn unintentionally summoned by Tilda Swinton in Three Thousand Years of Longing.
