Jack Black would be up for playing a 'portly American' if there's another live-action Yakuza movie: 'Sega, give me a jingle'
Summary
He's really trying to rack up those videogame adaptation credits.
Now that he's got Minecraft and Super Mario Galaxy under his belt, celebrated loud man Jack Black is looking for his next videogame movie gig. And it turns out he's got excellent taste, because he's got his eye on Yakuza.
Chatting to ScreenRant to promote Super Mario Galaxy, where he lends his voice to Bowser, he revealed that he'd be willing to jump ship from Nintendo to Sega.
"I'm going to throw my hat in that ring," he said. "I don't know if there [are] any parts for me, like a portly American, but talk to me. Sega, give me a jingle."
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While the Yakuza series is mostly set in Japan, American characters do crop up from time to time, sometimes as slapstick parodies. The last two Yakuza games were also set in the US—specifically Hawaii. They're on my to-play list because Yakuza games are a million hours long and I'm still catching up.
Anyway! I could see him fitting in perfectly. The man's a delightful weirdo with the right energy to pull off one of Yakuza's eccentrics. He's got less experience in dramatic roles, though, and one of the most important elements of the long-running series is its ability to careen between absurd and deadly serious situations.
One minute you're hunting down underwear thieves, and the next you're in an hour-long cutscene about shady pharmaceutical companies.
Can he pull off pathos, is what I'm wondering.
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Amazon's Yakuza TV show was a bit of a dud, though, so Black might end up waiting a while for that call from Sega. I imagine he'll still be cropping up in more videogame movies, though. It seems like that's his thing these days. Though I do wonder if he regrets playing Claptrap in the Borderlands disaster—who wouldn't?
At the very least, he's probably going to be able to keep getting work as Bowser. I hear that Mario is a big deal. I wouldn't know, of course, because as PC Gamer's online editor I am contractually obligated to ignore other platforms and definitely not stay up all night playing Pokopia.