If Kick-Ass does as well at the box office as everyone is expecting, British actor Aaron Johnson is about to become very famous for playing a superhero-- albeit a superhero with no powers and only a vague sense of mission and purpose. But just because Chris Evans can play both Captain America and the Human Torch, don't expect Johnson to start pulling double superhero duty as well.
At today's press day for Kick-Ass, Johnson admitted that he's been approached to play other superhero roles, "stupidly," in his words. He went on to explain, "Obviously they haven't got that much of a creative brain when someone else has a movie coming out called Kick-Ass, why would they want to be the next superhero that's already been done before...." He declined to say which role he'd been offered, but saying "superhero that's already been done before" definitely further fueled my personal speculation that he'd make a perfect Peter Parker in the Spider-Man reboot-- even though Johnson apparently isn't interested in going that direction.
In a later 1:1 interview Johnson explained to me, "I would play another superhero, but not necessarily soon." As he puts it, he's not opposed to superhero movies, particularly since he's the proud star of one right now, but the single-minded Hollywood mentality that because people play a superhero once, they should do it over and over again. "It's just ridiculous. Producers just aren't thinking. It's why shit movies get made."
Depending on how well Kick-Ass does, it's still entirely possible that those same producers will keep hounding Johnson, and hell, depending on how much money they offer, he may take the part. But with everyone involved in Kick-Ass already harboring high hopes for making a sequel, I wouldn't count on seeing Johnson in anything but the green scuba suit any time soon.
