Michael Keaton talks going from hero to villain in Spider-Man: Homecoming

In case you were living under a rock for the last few days (which is possible), Spider-Man fever has gripped the film world with the first trailer for Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming landing last night. And while many fans will have their exciting moments from it (new suits, Iron Man flying etc), the sight of Michael Keaton as the film’s big bad The Vulture has got us really excited.

The Oscar Nominee is best remembered by many as Batman from the first two feature films directed by Tim Burton but now, almost thirty years later, Keaton is swapping heroics for villainy. Speaking to Deadline about his new film The Founder, the discussion soon turned to comic-books and Keaton spoke of bringing the character to life and if he had a long-standing desire to play a villain after watching Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer do it so well against his Dark Knight:

“Those three and everybody else were so great. I didn’t have time to be jealous or even think that way. I can’t remember if there was a time I thought man, they’re having a lot of fun and I’ve got to be the center of this thing. I just hoped what I was doing was working. I had never done anything like that and it was a big risk, going down that road. That was the only way I know how to do this and boy, do I hope I’m right about how I’m playing this. There’s so many things in that movie that were never in the script. The whole hanging thing, in order to sleep, the rewriting or improvising of the big, long dinner table. What Tim and I agreed on was, this was darkly funny too. I didn’t think about it as being charming but in retrospect it had a style and a charm. The truth of it is, I never ever thought about Batman. For me it was all about Bruce Wayne. Who was he? The other part, I hope we figure out a way to make that work. But the key was always Bruce Wayne.”

Keaton also said that Tom Holland was “a great kid” and that prior to signing on to Homecoming he had not seen any of the Marvel films, saying:

“I haven’t seen any of those movies, though. I just haven’t. It’s not a judgment.”

The Founder opens in the UK on February 17th, 2017 ; Spider-Man: Homecoming arrives July 7th, 2017.