10 Unused Villains For DC Movies (And Who Should Play Them)

DC's space gods to psychos that really deserve movie deals...

By Rob Leane /

One challenge presented by DC's plan to expand and extend their cinematic universe is the issue of villains - alongside recasting old favourites we've seen in already (in the vein of Michael Shannon as General Zod, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Jared Leto as the Joker), Warner Bros and DC Entertainment will surely also be looking for new bad guys fans may not expect. Variation is the spice of life after all. In order to keep audiences engaged, they'll surely be searching for sinister characters from the comics that mainstream cinema hasn't hosted yet. And, of course, this will present a whole new challenge of finding the actors capable of playing them. This isn't always an easy task, either. While most thespians can turn in a psychopathic performance, how many of them could make us care about a huge cosmic entity with a silly name and elaborate superpowers, for example? DC Comics history is full of interesting supervillains - varying from small town crooks to galactic menaces - that haven't yet got the movie treatment. The films have space for both types of villain, but they'll need some very strong actors to wrangle these lesser-known baddies into cinema-worthy adversaries. Snyder could do a lot worse than considering this lot...

10. Calendar Man (Lars Mikkelsen)

As rumours suggest, we could well be getting a trilogy of Ben Affleck Batman movies after Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. And while we should probably expect Jared Leto€™s Joker to make some form of appearance in one or several of these films, it also seems likely that Warner Bros will want their chosen director (possibly Affleck himself?) to introduce some new threats for Gotham€™s Dark Knight to face, as well. One prime choice would be The Calendar Man - also known as Julian Gregory Day - a supervillain who commits crimes based on dates, seasons and days of the week. Although he was initially seen as something of a joke (he famously stopped for a costume change once, despite Batman being in pursuit), more recent appearances have painted Calendar Man in a more sinister light. In Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale€™s iconic miniseries The Long Halloween, Batman turned to an incarcerated (and rather chillingly intimidating) Calendar Man for help when a new serial killer seemed to be copycatting his modus operandi. Since then, he€™s made a few more appearances that also present him seriously. With the right script, a Calendar Man movie €“ or a straight film adaptation of The Long Halloween, with Calendar Man in a supporting role €“ could be very interesting indeed. Our top choice to play him would be Lars Mikkelsen, who proved in Sherlock that he could present an enigmatic evildoer very well indeed. He may not be a physical threat to The Bat, but he could certainly be an intellectually stimulating enemy.