It’s hard not to have at least a mild affection for Danny DeVito.
From having a small role in the masterpiece “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to directing the underrated “Throw Momma from the Train” and understated “Death to Smoochy,” DeVito is one of the great comedic actors and directors of our time.
And now thousands of fans are hilariously advocating for Danny DeVito to take over an iconic movie role.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is weird and almost intentionally ambiguous.
For instance, Sony and 20th Century Fox-owned parts of the universe. For a long time, Sony had the rights to Spider-Man and Venom before the advent of Marvel as a movie studio.
20th Century Fox still owns the rights to X-Men.
But then everything became complicated when The Walt Disney Company bought 20th Century Fox; which means they own all of the X-Men now along with Deadpool.
Disney also owns Marvel (or technically works in conjunction like how they operated with Pixar) but the X-Men and Avengers don’t function in the same universe even though it’s all under the Marvel Comics umbrella. It’s kind of a mess.
It’s like Marvel Comics have several universes in the same universe. It’s confusing.
Obviously one of the most popular X-Men is Wolverine, which was played by movie star Hugh Jackman in “X-Men,” “X2: X-Men United,” “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “X-Men: First Class,” “The Wolverine,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” a small cameo in “X-Men: Apocalypse,” and the best one of all “Logan.”
After the rated-R masterpiece “Logan,” Jackman decided to hang up his cleats and move on from the character because it was actually Jerry Seinfeld who told him that he should move away from the character because at some point people will grow tired of him always playing that role. In fact, Jackman is the only actor to ever play the iconic superhero in film.
So that means 21st Century Fox (or Disney) needs to recast the role for upcoming movies because Hollywood doesn’t know how to not reboot or revamp proven franchises. It’s guaranteed box-office. Why wouldn’t they?
But, how about the 4-foot 10-inch 74-year-old, Danny DeVito, taking over the muscular character?
There’s a petition floating around on Change.org (where petitions go to die and largely influences nothing) where a little over 17,000 people have signed it in order to get DeVito to take over the coveted role.
Ring Arius started the petition and it reads, “The only man able to take the throne after Hugh Jackman. We believe that if Wolverine is to make an appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the only man able to pull it off is Danny DeVito.”
Even the concept art poster they created for this petition is hilarious because it features DeVito in a wife-beater tank top with the claws.
Of course, this is all in jest and there’s no way they would recast DeVito in the role but it’s hard not to see the hilarity in it.
And it got even better too when one fan said the justification for DeVito to play the role was, “Because Danny Devito is the voice of our generation.” Again, he’s 74-years-old.
Another fan wrote, “This is the most important cause I’ve ever supported.”
The best comment was, “Clearly Danny DeVito is the best actor for this role. Anyone else would ruin the movie.”
As of now, DeVito hasn’t responded to this viral petition but it seems like he would absolutely get a kick out of it.
