If you can’t find a good villain for your movie, then why not just take the part yourself? While this may not work for most directors, thankfully the helmer of Paramount’s Jack Ryan reboot swings both ways. Kenneth Branagh, coming off Marvel’s Thor and playing Sir Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn, will be doing just that.

After getting attached the project headed by Star Trek lead Chris Pine earlier this year, Branagh is now in talks to become the villain of the action blockbuster. The film will follow Ryan, now located in Moscow as a financial analyst, and leaving his Marine days behind him. The plot kicks in when he learns his company is going to “finance a terrorist attack designed to collapse the U.S. economy, and must race against time to save America and his wife.” Branagh comes into play as the Russian villain mastermind, who “will destroy America’s economy by making the dollar worthless.” [Variety]

As he’s also behind the camera, hopefully Branagh put some extra care in making this fairly generic-sounding villain truly evil. We heard some rumors this spring that Pine was interested in creating more of a character-focused spy film and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is intent on making a big action film, while the studio wants to make it a strict thriller. Let’s hope the studio has figured this out and fine-tuned the script that has come from many top Hollywood writers including David Koepp, Steve Zaillian, Hossein Amini, Anthony Peckham, and Adam Cozad.

Do you think Branagh will make a good villain? And director?