I'm not sure you actually work in Hollywood if you haven't at least been considered for a role in a major comic book movie. Whenever we learn that a new popular comic book hero is going to appear in a movie fans immediately begin to consider who would be the best actor to play the part. Often, even if there isn't a specific plan to bring a character to the screen, fans like to consider what heroes or villains a given actor would be right to play. This was the process that led to discovering which DC character John Boyega would like to play, as fans began to suggest other characters they thought he should play.
It started with a fan telling John Boyega on Twitter that he'd be perfect as Static Shock. The actor, very rightly I think, said that somebody younger, perhaps somebody new, should play the role of that particular teen hero. Then another fan suggested Boyega could play the Jon Stewart Green Lantern, which is, for better or worse, one of the characters that is brought up whenever any black actor is brought up for a comic book role. Having said that, this fan had a particularly compelling reason why Boyega would be good for that role. However, the actor had a very different idea...
Red Hood, for those not up on the history, is a character within the Batman continuity. The name has been used by more than one person, including the Joker before he was the Joker, but the title is mostly associated with Jason Todd, the second Robin of Batman's career, who was believed to have been killed by Joker, but came back as the vicious and violent Red Hood.
Red Hood starts out as a villain, blaming Batman for what the Joker did to him, but eventually, he evolves into the anti-hero category of comic book character. Red Hood fights crime like Batman but is a distinct character from Bats because Red Hood is perfectly willing to kill criminals in order to stop them.
I mean, if John Boyega wants to play Red Hood, I say let him play Red Hood. If nothing else, Red Hood is an interesting character who would be cool to see on screen. While we've certainly seen ant-hero characters before, Red Hood has perhaps less about him that's quite as redeeming as others. He would be harder for many comic book fans to relate to or embrace, but that makes him potentially a lot more interesting.
Of course, even if there's a chance John Boyega could play Red Hood, we have no idea what the odds of that are or what it could look like. Right now we have a brand new Robert Pattinson Batman movie on the way as well as plans for the upcoming Flash movie to include multiple versions of the character. It's really unclear what the long term plans for Batman are, but then again, if we're heading toward the DC Multiverse really becoming "a thing" then John Boyega could certainly be Red Hood in one of them.
