Model-turned-actor Channing Tatum has not impressed me much in the few movies I have seen him in. Most recently, his performance as Duke in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was almost universally panned, but it’s hard to judge an actor’s true potential in a movie where the script is terrible and the focus is entirely on action and special effects. I know he has had a few dramatic roles in films like A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Stop-Loss, but I think most of his stock in Hollywood currently comes from starring roles in the dance flicks She’s The Man and Step Up.

Bloody Disgusting reports that Tatum has signed on to star in The Darkness, the latest film from The Pang Brothers (The Eye, Bangkok Dangerous). Based on the comic book by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis, and David Wohl, he will play Jackie, a hitman for a New York mob family, who finds himself possessed by a dark spirit that gives him supernatural powers. Apparently not everyone is a fan of Channing Tatum, however; he had also been attached to play a hitman in the true crime story The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, but the book’s author, Phil Carlo, backed out of the deal when he heard that Tatum was going to star! Awesome. Here’s what Carlo had to say:

“I had to turn him down. I really hated the idea of Channing Tatum. I told di Bonaventura that this is not the guy to play one of the most feared killers of the 20th Century,” Carlo said. “I think Mickey Rourke would really be good. He’s got that sense of danger, and there’s a similarity between the two. But it’s not Channing Tatum.”

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