'Moon Knight': Oscar Isaac Will Star In Marvel's Latest Disney+ Series
Oscar Isaac, one of the very best actors of his generation, is about to step into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
He's currently in talks to star in Moon Knight, a forthcoming Disney+ series about a psychologically unstable mercenary who may or may not communicate with a lunar god who bestows the powers of super strength. This sounds like one of the darkest MCU characters yet – and weirdly, it will be the second Egyptian-themed Marvel character that Isaac will play if the deal goes through.
Variety reports that Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Inside Llewyn Davis) is in talks to play Moon Knight, a mercenary named Marc Spector who has dissociative identity disorder. In the comics, Spector is left for dead by his boss after the two find an archaeological dig site. Spector is approached by Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon, and given a second chance at life if he agrees to be Khonshu's avatar on Earth, and Spector agrees. Spector returns to the world of the living and develops multiple secret identities, including a millionaire named Steven Grant and a taxicab driver named Jake Lockley, which give him access to different sectors of society.
Being a former Marine and a former boxer, Moon Knight is an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and his super strength is directly tied to the moon itself: the fuller it gets, the stronger he gets. It's unclear if he's actually imbued with superpowers, or, if in his questionable mental state, he simply believes that he is, and somehow convinces his body to push beyond its typical limits.
This wouldn't be Isaac's first foray into superhero storytelling: he previously played the title villain in Fox's X-Men: Apocalypse, in which he was buried under pounds of makeup and gave us that unforgettable moment in which the resurrected baddie puts his hand up on TV and seemingly absorbs the entirety of human history while uttering the word, "Learning." Like Moon Knight, Apocalypse also had ties to ancient Egypt, which serves as an odd bit of trivia for Isaac's superhero roles.
Jeremy Slater (Umbrella Academy, Fantastic Four) is serving as the show's writer and showrunner. When the series was first announced at Disney's D23 Expo, Marvel head Kevin Feige referred to it as an "action adventure series" about a mercenary left for dead in the Egyptian desert. Does he have powers, or is he just crazy? Moon Knight does not have a release date set yet, but expect the character to appear in MCU films after headlining his own show.