Starring in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is considered a golden ticket to some actors – but not for all: studio boss Kevin Feige has revealed that one Hollywood star turns down so many offers it’s become “a tradition”.
While the stacked Avengers: Doomsday seems like it will feature every famous name under the sun, one person who won’t be showing up is Adam Driver.
Driver has been top of Feige’s wishlist of actors to star in a future Marvel film for a long time, and has even been asked several times. However, the Girls and Star Wars actor has repeatedly rejected the idea.
“It's no secret that we'd like to [work with Adam], but it's a tradition to Zoom with him and then he passes,” Feige told Happy Sad Confused podcast. “He's usually up front about how he's feeling.”
While it’s unknown what roles Feige had in mind for Driver, it’s rumoured he is being considered to play Magneto in the forthcoming X-Men reboot. According to the man in charge, though, no casting choices have been made.
Since playing Kylo Ren in the rebooted Star Wars trilogy, Driver, who shot to fame in HBO series Girls, has appeared in films including House of Gucci (2021), Ferrari (2023) and Francis Ford Coppola's critically-maligned Megalopolis (2024).
While he’s shunned franchises, he recently revealed he “always was interested in doing another Star Wars” – notably, a spin-off focused on his character titled The Hunt for Ben Solo.
“I had been talking about doing another one since 2021,” he said in 2024. “I always said: ‘With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second.’ I loved that character and loved playing him.”
When Ocean’s Eleven and Traffic filmmaker Steven Soderbergh wrote the film, the script was presented to Lucasfilm, who “loved the idea” and “totally understood our angle and why we were doing it”. However, when the project was pitched to Disney, they reportedly said no as “they didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive”.
Driver has two Oscar nominations to his name – for divorce drama Marriage Story (2019) and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018).
On Monday (20 July), Marvel released the first full trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, which sees Chris Hemsworth’s Thor uniting heroes from across multiple universes to face a new enemy: Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom.
The film, the first in a two-part Avengers finale, will feature almost every major character from the MCU, including Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh).
Other characters in the trailer include Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), the Black Panthers, Gambit (Channing Tatum) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) – as well as Downey Jr as supervillain Doctor Doom.
The 61-year-old’s new on-screen alter ego is an entirely separate character from Iron Man, AKA Tony Stark, who sacrificed himself by using the Infinity Stones to defeat Thanos in 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame.
Avengers: Doomsday – which doesn’t star Adam Driver – will be released on 18 December.
