Henry Cavill Will Star in a Voltron Movie
Henry Cavill isn’t hedging all his bets on that Warhammer 40K adaptation. The former Superman has signed on to star in a Voltron movie for Amazon MGM Studios, according to an exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter. Cavill will star with Daniel Quinn-Toye, a 21-year-old British actor who starred in the BBC Three series Badults and played Paris in a West End production of the William Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet that starred Tom Holland as Romeo. The film will be directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed the comedy classic Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and nothing that has been nearly as good since. (I didn’t see Red Notice, to be fair, but based on what I’ve heard, I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume it’s not as good as Dodgeball.)
If you’ve never heard of Voltron, it’s the re-dubbed version of two Japanese animated series, Beast King GoLion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV. The premise is basically the same as Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, to the extent that it’s fair to call Power Rangers a Voltron ripoff. A bunch of teenagers pilot big, robotic vehicles shaped like lions that join together to form a bigger warrior robot called Voltron. The heroes would fight the monstrous minions of an evil alien emperor. You’re getting where the Power Rangers ripoff charges come from, right? Voltron ran in the 80s and was revived numerous times throughout the 90s and 2000s, and it spawned plenty of toys and other merchandise, like its Power Rangers imitator.
My first thought when reading this was that Henry Cavill must have jumped ship from Warhammer 40K, something that had been rumored for a while – ever since the female Custodes were introduced and talk of a war of the woke between Amazon and Games Workshop started. But The Hollywood Reporter says that Cavill is still involved with the show, so he’s either doing both or his exit/the series’ collapse isn’t being made public yet. Whatever the case, I’m glad he’s got something else to do. Cavill has been used and abused by Hollywood since his big break as Superman, and every time it looks like he’s finally going to have a hit on his hands, something ruins it. Despite all of this, he’s well-liked by moviegoers, in large part because he seems like a genuinely nice guy who appreciates and defends his fans. It helps that Cavill appears to be as big a geek as the rest of us, taking pride in his Warhammer fandom and doing his damnedest to keep The Witcher in line with its source material (to little avail, unfortunately). It would be nice if Voltron finally gave him a big hit.
That seems to be the purpose of the Voltron casting so far. Aside from Henry Cavill, Daniel Quinn-Toye is an up-and-coming actor, and this looks like his big break. He’s never been in a movie before, and now he’s making the jump to a big studio blockbuster. It reminds me of Tom Hiddleston, who mostly appeared on the stage and in smaller parts on some British TV shows before Kenneth Branagh cast him as Loki in Thor. I like seeing casting like this; that’s how you find the next big thing, something Marvel seemed to understand in its early days. (Imagine who they’d have cast as Reed Richards back then, instead of going for “Guy Who’s in Everything Because Who Cares?”) I wish Daniel Quinn-Toye luck, and I hope this works out for him and the movie. And, of course, the same goes for Henry Cavill, whom the universe owes a win.
Let us know what you think of Henry Cavill starring in a Voltron movie in the comments!
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