Vernon Davis Wants to Star in a Superhero Movie as His Own Original Character: 'Move Wind and Move Air'

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Since retiring from the National Football League in 2020, Vernon Davis is carving out space for himself as an actor — and he has some ideas for future roles, too!

While speaking with PEOPLE recently about his new movie The Ritual Killer, co-starring Morgan Freeman, Davis, 39, says he would "love to be a superhero."

Ideally, Davis says he would like to "make up a character" to play in an original movie, separate from superhero franchises that typically fold into the larger Marvel or D.C. cinematic universes.

"Gosh, dude, I wouldn't be able to fly, but I'd be able to ... I'd be super athletic," he adds, when asked what super powers his character might take on. "I'd be able to jump, I'd be able to lift and throw anything, and I'd be able to punch really fast."

In addition, Davis suggests that his character should "be able to move wind and move air at the highest level."

RELATED: Cole Hauser and Morgan Freeman Track Down a Murderer in The Ritual Killer Trailer

Brock Morse

In The Ritual Killer, Davis' character has no super powers. Instead, the former San Francisco 49ers tight end plays a serial killer performing a series of ritual murders called "muti" who crosses paths with Cole Hauser's detective character and Freeman's anthropology professor as they try to catch him.

For the new movie, Davis — who began acting professionally while playing in the NFL during the 2010s — took it upon himself to put in the extra work for his character.

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As the athlete-turned actor-producer studied the film's script, he realized he needed to take on his villain character's Zulu language and South African dialect. So he got to work with a translator he met through Instagram and a dialect coach named Scott.

RELATED: NFL Veteran Vernon Davis Is Trading the Football Field for the Big Screen During the Offseason

"Scott helped me with the dialect of the character and it all started to come together," Davis tells PEOPLE, recalling that when he sent material back to the film's producer, "he was just in awe of just the research that I was able to compile and all the work that I put into the character to make him believable."

"Because when you're doing movies like this, they didn't expect me to have a dialect," the actor adds of his process. "They didn't expect me to know the language. It's something that you do on your own."

The Ritual Killer is in theaters and on demand March 10.