Jessica Chastain has played some incredibly popular and memorable film roles over the years. However, one thing she doesn't really do is play any of them more than once. While most of Hollywood is focused on franchise filmmaking, Chastain picks roles that tell one story, and then she's done.
Although, that doesn't mean she would be totally against revisiting some of those old characters if given the chance. CinemaBlend's Sean O'Connell spoke to Chastain in the lead up to her new movie Dark Phoenix, and the actress admitted there was one role she'd love to revisit, her Oscar nominated character Celia Foote from The Help. According to Chastain...
Celia Foote in The Help. Yeah, she's so fun. And I'd love to see her, in the book, she helps Minny raise her kids, you know, because Minny leaves her husband. So, I'd love to see Minny and Celia and this kind of modern, and, of course, Celia's husband's still around, but, this like modern idea of what a family is. I think it's beautiful.
The Help was one of those rare movies that is both an awards season darling and a box office hit. The movie made over $200 million on a budget of $25 million. With numbers like that one could guess that there would be an audience that would love to see Jessica Chastain return to this character.
It seems unlikely such a thing would happen. While there is material in the novel of The Help that may not have made it into the movie adaptation, there is no sequel so there probably isn't enough material to justify a movie. It wouldn't be the first time Hollywood tried to write their own sequel to a popular novel if somebody tried, but if that were to happen, it probably would have seen the light of day before now.
Jessica Chastain is only now getting involved in her first big franchise tentpole blockbuster, but even there, she's done it in such a way that she's almost certainly not going to be coming back for multiple sequels. With the exception of the still forthcoming The New Mutants, Dark Phoenix will be the last of the Fox planned Marvel movies using the X-Men characters. While nobody knows just what Marvel has planned for the franchise, and it's possible even Marvel isn't quite sure yet, the most likely thing is a complete reboot with entirely new actors playing fresh versions of the characters,
Even if that wasn't the case, Jessica Chastain is playing the villain in Dark Phoenix, which tends to be the role least likely to return for sequels.
You can check out Jessica Chastain's complete comments on Celia Foote in the clip below.
Dark Phoenix is in theaters now.
