Jake Gyllenhaal is the hot pick for the villain in the next Spider-Man movie

If we look at Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland as being the definitive Spider-Men, then across their six solo movies, we’ve had quite the rogues gallery of villains. We’ve had Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Venom (shame), Lizard, Electro, Rhino, Shocker and Vulture - now breeeeeathe. 

So who’s next? Without revisting old villains - which they’ve done before (hi Green Goblin, and soon-to-be-hi Venom) - where do you go? After the very strong Vulture in the first Marvel Spidey flick, Homecoming, they’re going to want to keep the levels up, or even raise the bar - for that, you need an interesting villain with a stand-out superpower, and you need a quality actor to portray them.

So what they’ve gone and done is picked Mysterio, and chances are they’ll have nabbed Jake Gyllenhaal to whip on his cape. But who is this peculiar, round-headed bozo? And what does he do? How’s he going to react when he gets a ream of web sprayed in his face?

Well, Mysterio, or Quentin Beck (who is probably the most famous of the bulb-heads, and the one they’ll most likely use in the film) is a movie special effects whizz, who decides that his skills with illusions, hypnotism and mind-control are better suited to being a supervillain. So he goes after Spider-Man, like you obviously would if you were really good at pretending to go invisible or whatever.

He’s a tough cookie, though - throughout his varied career, he’s managed to disable Spider-Man’s Spider Sense, dissolve his webbing, convince him he had multiple personalities and even make him think he was six-inches tall. Good tactics, you have to agree.

The character, who was first introduced in the comics back in 1964, was very almost in Sam Raimi’s planned Spider-Man 4, according to leaked concept art, but when that was shelved, he never got to feature in any of the live-action films. Now he’s got a chance though, and - according to The Hollywood Reporter - he’s potentially in the very capable hands of Gyllenhaal (who was almost Spider-Man, didn’t you know), a man who is long overdue a stint in all this superhero malarkey that’s so popular of late.

It’s not 100% confirmed yet, but it’s highly likely that we’re going to be seeing the Jakester slot a big globe onto that cheese of his, come July 5th, 2019, when the sequel to Homecoming, which netted an enormous $880m at the box office, is due to arrive. 

Exciting! A big punching and illusions fight between the Human Web-Boy and Derren Brown The Astronaut! Sign us up!

(Image: Getty/Wiki Commons)