VIDEO: 'I've never played anyone THIS BAD' Hugh Jackman on his OTT Blackbeard in Pan

Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard in Pan

WHO IS BLACKBEARD? We meet Hugh Jackman's pirate villain as he explodes onto the screen in Joe Wright's new film Pan. Poor old Hook doesn't stand a chance...

Ask anyone to name Peter Pan’s nemesis and chances are they’ll tell you Hook.
The dastardly one-handed pirate captain of Neverland, with a fear of crocodiles and a love of harassing the Lost Boys, rules his crew and our imaginations with absolute power.
Well, not any more... \


New film Pan, which previews this weekend and hits cinemas on October 16, sends us back to the beginning of the Peter Pan legend.
Brace yourselves for strange times before Hook turned bad, and when he and Peter were actually friends.
So who is the big bad in Pan?
That would be Hugh Jackman’s magnificently malevolent Blackbeard…

“I’ve played bad guys before, but I don’t think I’ve ever played one quite this bad”, says Hugh Jackman.
His goateed villain is behind everything that goes on, from the very kidnapping that brings our young hero Peter to Neverland in the first place.
Under Blackbeard’s rule, Peter and his fellow orphans are thrown into the mines with thousands of others - including one James Hook.
There they are forced to dig ceaselessly for the rarest of gems: pixum, from which pixie dust is extracted.
It's basically slave labour – fairytale style.





Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard in Pan

“Blackbeard is a troubled guy, in search of eternal youth and capricious in the extreme”, says director Joe Wright.
“One minute, he’ll be charming and funny, the next he’s throwing someone off a plank.”
It's a huge change for an actor who is still best known for playing the dour and grumpy Wolverine, although Jackman recently named Tom Hardy as his successor to play Wolverine in the X-Men films.
Clearly Jackman is having a ball with his new role.
The Aussie star says that it’s his character's unhinged exuberance which “made him such a fun character to play.”

Pan and Hook as you've never seen them before

In a toweringly terrific OTT performance Jackman’s Blackbeard gleefully terrorizes the whole of Neverland.
These leaves us with a very unlikely hero as Garrett Hedlund’s youthful Hook deploys bags of charm and chutzpah to win us over.
He teams up with Peter (Levi Miller) and Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) as they take us on a new adventure through Neverland.
One thing never changes, though – just keep an eye out for those giant crocodiles…
Pan is released in cinemas October 16, with previews on October 10 and 11.