UPDATED! Dances With Kal-El: Who Will Kevin Costner Be In Superman?

Deadline is reporting that Kevin Costner will be joining Zack Snyder’s Superman movie, but the question is who the heck will he play? You basically have two options with Costner - play him in type and play him against type.

If you’re going with type, you cast him as Pa Kent. Costner would almost certainly love to go where Glenn Ford has gone before, and he brings a folksy aw-shucks element to the character that would work well. Also, Costner brings all that Field of Dreams baggage - one of the great daddy issue movies of all time, making his turn as a daddy all the more powerful.

But if you cast him against type you cast him as Lex Luthor. Now, I don’t know that Luthor is in the film - and good heavens do I hope we FINALLY get a Superman movie without Luthor (or Richard Pryor) - but if he is, casting the folksy, aw-shucks charm of Costner in the role is an intriguing reinvention of the character. Kevin Costner could bring a real Tea Party Midwest tax rebellion feel to the character. I could picture Costner doing some George W Bush mannerisms in that role.

If you want to miscast Costner, you make him Perry White. I don’t think Costner has the fire in his belly to play a lovable but shouty newspaper editor. Anyway, Arianna Huffington should play Perry White in the new version, and Clark should be filing reports from his iPhone.

What do you think? Knowing almost nothing about the movie or the characters who will be in it, who do you think Kevin Costner will play?

UPDATE: Latino Review says Costner is playing Pa Kent. I know their sources on this are pretty good, so I have trust.