Former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has played an antihero before, in films such as 2013’s Horns, but has he ever really played a proper villain? We’re struggling to think of such an example, but the actor will be giving it a shot in the near future, appearing alongside Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in Paramount’s upcoming The Lost City of D. Radcliffe is described as the villain of the story, which sounds like a romantic action adventure comedy in the vein of say, Romancing the Stone. Adam and Aaron Nee are directing.
The Lost City of D is not to be confused with the very similarly titled The Lost City of Z from 2016, which was a biographical drama about explorers in South America. This one is instead about “a reclusive romance novelist” played by Bullock, who is on tour with the cover model of her novels (Tatum), before said tour is interrupted by a botched kidnapping. The pair then ends up in the jungle—we realize the City of Z comparisons once again—where they learn that “life can be so much stranger, and more romantic, than any of her paperback fictions,” according to Deadline.
The obvious question, then, is “how does Radcliffe fit into this?” Is he the leader of the would-be kidnappers? Or some kind of jungle despot that the mismatched pair of Bullock and Tatum must join together to overcome? It will be interesting to see what kind of energy Radcliffe brings as a primary antagonist.
With that said, we’re sure he’s up for the job, having starred in quite the array of uniquely oddball roles in the years since his departure from the Wizarding World. In the last few years we’ve seen him as a living corpse in Swiss Army Man, and a guy with pistols bolted to his hands in Guns Akimbo, among other things. On TV, meanwhile, he’s been the anchor of the well-reviewed TBS comedy Miracle Workers. Here’s hoping we see some more of that quirky humor in The Lost City of D.