Jennifer Garner is picking up Elektra’s sai once again. After a nearly 20-year hiatus, the actress is returning to the role of Marvel Comics’ assassin antiheroine for Deadpool 3, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
The Marvel Studios production is currently shooting, with Ryan Reynolds reprising his fan-favorite part of the fourth wall-breaking Merc with a Mouth. Hugh Jackman has come out of Marvel retirement to play Wolverine once again.
Shawn Levy is in the director’s chair with the project to be the first movie that will feature a character, or in this case, two or three or more, from the stable that once belonged to 20th Century Fox. Fox owned several silos of Marvel’s characters before its acquisition by Disney in 2019 brought the movie rights to the characters back into Marvel proper.
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Garner first played the Marvel assassin in 20th Century Fox’s Daredevil, the 2003 feature that starred Ben Affleck as the Man Without Fear. While the film was not a hit, it did spawn a spinoff, with Garner toplining solo act Elektra two years later. That too, was not a box office success, but it was noteworthy as Garner was one of the few women to lead a studio comic book movie at the time.
Her involvement in Deadpool 3 hints at some sort of multiverse angle to the film that has long been rumored, and it is possible that other characters from Marvel films made by Fox could pop up. But this being Deadpool, one can’t rule out some meta, self-awareness either.
Marvel could not be reached for comment.
When she first played Elektra, Garner was in the middle of her starring turn as secret agent Sydney Bristow in ABC’s thriller Alias, which ran over 105 episodes from 2001 to 2006. Her recent movies include the 2021 Netflix hit Yes Day and a poignant appearance opposite Reynolds in sci-fi adventure The Adam Project, which Levy directed.
She also appeared on the recent Party Down reboot and starred in and executive produced Apple TV+’s limited series The Last Thing He Told Me, which debuted in April. Garner is repped by CAA, Linden Entertainment, and Jason Sloane and Harris Hartman of Sloane Offer.
Producing Deadpool 3 are Marvel’s Kevin Feige, Levy and Reynolds. The script is by Reynolds, Levy, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Zeb Wells.
