Poor Tyler Mane. Sure, he was pretty lame as Sabretooth in the first X-Men, but that doesn’t mean he should be passed over in the casting of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After all, while he may not be a big name actor, he did just star in a successful movie (he was Michael Myers in the Halloween remake). But it appears Fox is trying to go with someone new as Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth) — and by someone new, I don’t mean an unknown; I mean someone who isn’t Mane. According to CHUD.com, that someone was nearly Karl Urban, an actor familiar to fanboys as Eomer in the Lord of the Rings movies. But Urban’s talks to play Creed apparently fell through, and now the studio is going for an even bigger geek-movie star: Gerard Butler. This is from another one of those tips from a “closely placed and highly trusted source,” so take of it what you will. It could be true or it could not be, and even if it’s true, the story is merely that Butler is being offered the role. He could very well not be interested.
But who cares what he thinks? The more important question is whether or not we are interested. Maybe if Gavin Hood were doing a 300 type of style for Wolverine — specifically one that looked like Mark Texeira’s art — Butler would fit. Otherwise, the actor needs to be blonder, and naturally so. Maybe Butler could pass for the character with a bleach job all over, but I’d rather not be thinking about it being Butler with a bleach job all over. Remember this isn’t necessarily Sabretooth we’re talking about. He’s likely not going to be in costume much. I wish I could find a picture of my ideal Creed look (it’s from a comic about 15 years ago and he’s in plain clothes, on a talk show), but I can’t. I think all of the actors I always imagined were ’60s western guys for some reason, anyway.
Additionally, CHUD.com has heard that Hood is trying to get Natalie Portman to play a character named Kayla. I think we should all just kind of ignore that information and hope that it is as untrue as possible.