That problem would not be limited to superhero films.
“So, if I’m trying to play a doctor or anything, my character won’t be believable,” O’Neal added.
It is a peculiar form of typecasting: being considered too famous to convincingly pretend to be somebody famous enough to save the universe.
His Avengers campaign began years earlier
O’Neal first publicly pitched himself for an Avengers role in a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“I would love to be in one of the ‘Avengers’ movies,” he said at the time, before proposing a suitably restrained entrance to the franchise: “I would like to kick Robert Downey Jr.’s ass.”
The suggested confrontation with Downey’s Tony Stark never reached the screen. O’Neal did not say which Avengers project he had been considered for, what role was discussed or which executive delivered the rejection.
His comments nevertheless offer an explanation for why one of America’s most recognisable athletes has remained largely on the edges of major action franchises despite repeatedly expressing interest in them.
Steel gave O’Neal his first superhero role
O’Neal had already played a comic-book hero long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became Hollywood’s dominant superhero franchise.
In the 1997 DC film Steel, a then-25-year-old O’Neal played John Henry Irons, a gifted engineer who constructs a mechanised suit and becomes a vigilante.
The film gave him the superhero role he wanted, though with the visual effects available in the late 1990s rather than those of the modern blockbuster era.
“It was an awesome opportunity,” O’Neal told Entertainment Weekly in 2018. “However, I’d like to redo it and get some of these 2018 special effects.”
No such remake has followed, and his proposed battle with Iron Man appears to have joined it on the list of unrealised Shaq projects.
Shaq still has Hollywood plans
The former NBA star has not abandoned acting. He made a cameo in Scary Movie earlier in 2026 and has a role lined up in Grown Ups 3.
O’Neal has also identified another potential co-star — and another imaginary opponent. He said he wants to make a film with Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock.
“I want to do a movie with The Rock so I can beat him up,” O’Neal said, describing the task as being as “easy” as “barbeque chicken.”
That project has not been announced, but it may offer a simpler solution to Hollywood’s Shaq problem: cast him opposite one of the few performers whose entrance is equally unlikely to go unnoticed.
