With Marvel/Netflix’s Jessica Jones now wrapped, attention has turned to starting shooting Luke Cage, with Mike Colter playing the title character. The team, including showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, has now found someone who will play an important part of the show: Alfre Woodard.
The actress is playing a local power player called Minetta, though Deadline has learned that could be a cover for her real identity as a take on Black Mariah, a criminal kingpin and drugs baron, and an enemy that has cropped up in both the Luke Cage comics and Iron First, which would be handy, since he’s the next Marvel character to be adapted under Netflix’s deal with the company.
Cage’s superpowers are the result of an experimental procedure. In Cage’s case, the result was supposed to produce immunity to all illness, but he emerged from the operation with steel-tough, bulletproof skin, super-dense muscle, and massively enhanced strength and stamina. It happened to him in prison, where he was thrown for a crime he didn’t commit. He agreed to be messed with in exchange for parole, but ended up getting out through a jailbreak anyway, and becomes a hero for hire. For more on all the heroes we'll meet in the Netflix shows, head here.
He’ll be introduced as a key part of Jessica Jones (due to hit Netflix later this year) before getting his own series in 2016. Woodard, meanwhile, was last seen in horror pic Annabelle and will next show up in Mississippi Grind, due in our cinemas on October 23.