Despite, y’know, what happened in Avengers: Infinity War, it’s still full steam ahead for Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel. And now, that film is closed to landing a major, major name as its ‘big bad’.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Jake Gyllenhaal is in advanced talks to play Mysterio in the Homecoming follow-up. This isn’t the first time that the Donnie Darko and Nightcrawler star has been up for a superhero movie, and it’s not even the first time that he was in the frame for a Spider-Man picture.

If you remember back, Gyllenhaal was one of those up for the role of ol’ Web-head in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. That role would of course go to Tobey Maguire, and Maguire would play the Wall-crawler in three movies. However, after some serious back issues ahead of Spider-Man 2, it at one stage looked as if Maguire was going to have to give up the famed red and blue duds. Who could step in to fill those particular shoes? Why, that’d be Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal would actually get fitted for his own Spidey costume when it appeared that Maguire’s back problems were too severe, although all of that would ultimately come to nothing when Maguire managed to get himself fixed up and ready to go in time for Raimi’s first Spider-Man sequel.

Since then, Gyllenhaal has turned down the role of Rick Flag – a role that would go to RoboCop’s Joel Kinnaman – in Suicide Squad, and only earlier this year he was apparently Matt Reeves’ top pick to replace Ben Affleck in the cape and cowl for Reeves’ The Batman.

Focussing on the Mysterio character, he’s a long, long-standing member of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery. In fact, his roots go bac to 1964’s The Amazing Spider-Man #13. A special effects master, Quentin Beck decides to use his Hollywood skills of smoke and mirrors to his advantage as a criminal mastermind. Like many of Spidey’s most famous rogues, Beck wasn’t the only one to take on the moniker of Mysterio, with Daniel Berkhart and Francis Klum just some of those to take on the nefarious identity as their own over the years.

For those of you who know your trivia, Mysterio was originally planned to appear in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4. Of course, that film never actually happened due to the so-so response to Spider-Man 3. In that realm, we’d already actually seen Mysterio but never knew it. You see, in Spider-Man 4 it was to be revealed that Bruce Campbell’s character – who had had minor roles butting heads with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker in the three previous films – was really none other than Mysterio. He would have been a small side villain for Spidey to deal with as he looked to tackle the Vulture as the main villain of the piece, but that never came to be as Raimi departed the franchise and a reboot would follow with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

At this stage, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are working on the screenplay for the Homecoming sequel, with director Jon Watts also to return. The to-be-titled follow-up is currently booked in for a July 2019 release.

As ever, expect more on all of this as we get it.