Two days after news broke that Isabela Merced joins the cast of Sony Pictures’ next ‘Spider-Man’ spin-off, “Madame Web,” the film adds another actor to its ranks. This time, it’s the first male actor in the female-heavy ensemble and quite the intriguing addition: French star and actor of Algerian descent, Tahar Rahim.
Deadline reports that Rahim joins Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Merced in the upcoming film. Plot details for “Madame Web” are scarce, but TV director S.J. Clarkson directs a script by “Morbius” writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. In the comics, Madame Web is an older woman with myasthenia gravis with psychic abilities but connected to a life-support system that looks like a spider web. Due to her age, she never actively fought any villains and instead acted as a kind of telepathic help to Spider-Man to catch villains, but maybe Sazama and Sharpless have new plans for the character.
Since his breakout role in Jacques Audiard’s 2009 film, “A Prophet,” Rahim has been a fixture in international cinema, working with the likes of Ashgar Farhadi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Fatih Akin. He co-stars with Jodie Foster in Kevin Macdonald’s 2021 “The Mauritanian” and stars as serial killer Charles Sobraj in the miniseries “The Serpent.”
Rahim has several upcoming projects, too. He just wrapped production on Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” with Joaquin Phoenix and stars in Serge Bozon’s French musical “Don Juan,” which just had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Catch Rahim next in Scott Z. Burn’s limited series for AppleTV+, “Extrapolations.”
So, even though no one has any clue what “Madame Web” is about, it has a super-intriguing ensemble cast lined up. More news on the project should break soon.
