Back in 2023, Seth Rollins took some time off WWE to film for at that time, the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe project Captain America: New World Order. While his role was never 100% confirmed yet, he was said to have been portraying the leader of the Serpent Society, King Cobra—a longtime enemy of the Captain America franchise.
However, the movie—which was originally scheduled to release on May 3, 2024—underwent extensive reshoots to the point that it was not only pushed back to February 14, 2025 AND renamed to Captain America: Brave New World, but entire plot elements have been reworked and Giancarlo Esposito was eventually cast as Seth Voelker aka Sidewinder to be the new leader of the Serpent Society of the film. As a byproduct of that rewrite, Seth Rollins has been nixed from the film entirely.
This means the Rollins household is 0 for 2 in the MCU, as Becky Lynch had previously filmed a still undisclosed cameo role for Eternals that was cut from the film as well.
When speaking to Chris Van Vliet, the subject of his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe came up. Here are some quotes from that interview, courtesy of Van Vliet’s website.
On Captain America:
“It releases in February. I wish it the best, but I am not a part of that film. [What happened?] Well, does my NDA still apply if I’m not in the film anymore? Truth be told, any answer I gave would only be my opinion on it. The script went through a lot of rewrites and reshoots so what I was there to do, essentially my role got either repurposed or completely erased. So I did do a bit of an audition to possibly pop into another role, I believe, or the repurposing of my role, I’m not exactly sure on what it was, but they ended up going in a different direction with it. And yeah my understanding was there were just a lot of rewrites and a lot of reshoots, and they know they’ve got a finished product that hopefully they’re happy with, and hopefully it’s successful, but it will be sans Seth Rollins.”
On fans thinking they spotted Seth Rollins in the trailer:
“To be fair, he looked an awful lot like you as well because you could just see his eyeballs. I’m not in the movie. I will say unequivocally I’m not in the film. I do not want anybody to go to the film thinking I’m here to see Seth Rollins. There might be two people that would do that, but I don’t want those two people to waste their time. I don’t want to misinform anybody. I don’t want to lead anybody astray. I am not in the film. It should be a good one. Marvel does a great job. I mean, if I’m not [in anything else], I don’t care. I don’t love acting. I love wrestling. My wife loves acting. She’s way better at it than I am. She’s got awesome stuff coming out, obviously, she announced her bit on Star Trek, which is going to be sick. I think that comes out maybe next year and she’s got another thing that I’m not allowed to talk about that’ll be coming out sooner than that. Yeah, I can’t say anything. People have been like oh she’s on hiatus, taking a break. She has not been taking a break. She has been working her tail off the last six, seven months, she’s been hustling.”
Do you think Rollins should get another shot at playing a part in the MCU? If so, who would you cast him as? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
