Idris Elba – the man who created the role of Stringer Bell on The Wire, one of the greatest characters in television history – is in talks to co-star in an adaptation of The Losers, a military action comic from DC’s Vertigo line.
The Losers are a special ops group who got betrayed by the CIA. Everybody thinks they’re dead, but they’re actually conducting their own secret ops against The Agency, trying to get revenge. Jeffrey Dean Morgan has already been cast, playing the leader of the Losers, Clay. Elba would be playing Roque, the second in command who has a history of betraying his teammates for money.
If The Losers were more popular you would hear a great scream arise from the internet: Roque is white in the comic, and Elba is patently a black man. But I don’t think the color of a comic book character’s skin is usually all that important. And besides, the producers of The Losers are changing things up all over the place: Zoe Saldana, aka Uhura in the new Star Trek, is in talks to play Aisha, a Middle Eastern woman who get hooked up with The Losers when she learns that the man who betrayed them is the same man who killed her father. It’s Obama’s America, we’re post-racial!