The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday afternoon that actor Geoffrey Rush (Mystery Men, Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, at least four Oscar telecasts since 1997) has been cast this week in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. Warner Brothers should be officially announcing his involvement today.
Careful headline readers may be taken aback by this news since, by my count, Green Lantern comes out in about 78 days.
Careful actual readers will have gone past the headline to immediately see that Rush has been cast as voice talent, specifically the voice of Tomar-Re, the bird-faced, fin-headed Green Lantern who will be played onscreen by CG wizardry. In other words, it's not like he has ten weeks to film his role and have it inserted into the film or anything.
While this is probably not as last-minute as it seems to us industry outsiders (indeed, some of you may remember Bill Hader being cast in Scott Pilgrim with about ninety days to spare last year) it is the first thing we've heard about the Green Lantern movie in many a day. Since the trailer– which I believe came out in November– the public has seen little of the marketing blitz usually associated with a film like this. Hopefully, this weekend's WonderCon is the start of big things for the movie, and there's no need to read anything into any of this.
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To be honest, this isn’t incredibly odd. Brian Cox’s voice was added nearly a month before the first half of Doctor Who: The End of Time and Michael Sheen was just announced to have been cast for a voice role in an episode of Doctor Who slated for the first or second week of May. There was a third example I had from Toy Story 3 but it fails my memory at this time.
the lack of promotion/internet presence that the green lantern movie has had thus far is kind of worrying?
So this means that Hal’s facing the fears of his speech impediment?
Was that an easy joke? Yeah, but I can live with it.
I’ve seen reports online that the reason for Green Lantern‘s marketing delay is that the movie’s special effects are still being worked on. I’m crossing my fingers for this film.
That aside, I like Geoffrey Rush so, yay!
not a good sign for the movie
For me, it’s interesting to see this. I’ve seen so many special features for movies where the voices for animated/generated characters are done way in advance, and the “performance” from the voice actor is worked into the animation.
Should I take away from this that Mr. Rush is voicing an animated character who is already finished? Is this a little like the process when a movie is dubbed into a different language? In short, does Mr. Rush have to match his performance to the timing already established by the animators?
(Mind you, I know movies have lots of Looping, but in that case an actor is re-recording over their own performance; and not necessarily having to fit it into the performance/animation of someone else.)
Well late awesome talent is better than not awesome talent.
I’m not all that worried by this. The lack of promotion is a little unsettling but not a major cause for concern. I remain optimistic about this one. I still think we’re in for a treat.
@powerdad I guess it all depends how they are doing it, they could also do a mo-cap with dots on his face when he is in the booth and map it onto the character already I guess Avatar style. Still this might be cutting it a bit close… and this is the sort of thing you usually want to have squared away so the other actors can react to it properly? Maybe they just threw a bucket of money at him.
i’m not worried over hte lack of marketing. They might be holding off incase of a delay. Sometimes extra marketing push means the studio knows its a bad movie and might flop (test screenings etc) to maximize opening weekend returns.
I won’t be worried until i hear a “no critc review screenings until after opening weekend”…then you know its over.
@powerdad if they can have Crush the turtle lip-sync LIVE at Disneyland then it should be easy to do lipsync in 2 months.
What was the last summer “tentpole” movie that had no buzz? I remember being surprised by The Matrix, but that was in the early days of the internet.
He’d be a good Ganthet.
the lack of promotion/internet presence doesn’t borther me.
i really just wonder about the professionalism of the whole production when a hear about something like this.
unless that guy they got before just really didn’t work out this should not come this late.
i must admit that this movie has me a little worried. specially with all that’s riding on this film doing good.hopefully this new casting is just for voice overs for a cg character.isnt weird that we still dont have a new trailer for this,hope they fixed the suit.
@jonnyflash –they aren’t doint A LOT of advance advertising right not for the new Pirates of the Caribean either…but they are still doing SOME.
@AmirCat Thats not an entirely bad idea, i mean no one is listed as doing his voice or mocap.
@ed209AF ironicly i missed that second bit where he said he is doing the voice work of Tomar Re.
@jonnyflash I think Matrix came out in March or something? It wasn’t really marketed as a summer blockbuster and was more of a sleeper hit, especially on DVD. I remember it came out during the school year for sure when I was in HS because my friend wrote a piece about the alergories and whatnot in the film.
Love Geoffrey Rush.
P.S. I think it’s great that DC arn’t hyping up the movie too much, can’t stand when the previews give away the best action scenes or plot points.
relax
This is very common. Leonard Nimoy was just added as a voice in Transformers 3 and that comes out only 2 weeks after GL. And, if I remember right Hugo Weaving was added to the first Transormers very late.
I just had a look-see at IMDB to check out who else was doing voicework (Dennis Haybert as Kilowog is spot-on), and it says that John Larroquette is billed as voicing Tomar-Re. Wonder what happened with that?
@JimBeau
I’ve found IMBD to not be the most reliable source for casting information.
meh, not like the movie was going to be worth watching anyway. The upcoming animated feature, on the other hand…
I don’t see anything there that says he has just been cast recently, only that he is just being announced. With the Harry Potter films for instance actors would be sometimes annonunced as being cast long after they had shoot their scenes and photos had leaked.
So does lack of hype-creation and media presence mean they realise they’ve got a turd on their hands and don’t want to draw to much attention by declaring it to be great?
I can’t help thinking from what little i’ve seen of it that it’s going to fall somewhere between just okayish and pretty darn terrible. Like Daredevil with added cheesy CGI. I can’t believe they re-covered the re-release of Secret Origin with a picture of CGI-suited Ryan Renolds…!
@azrael1981 “hope they fixed the suit”
Unlikely, seeing as they’re using it as an image on the secret origin reprints… http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=17259
I suppose the point is it’s meant to be a suit made of light; still looks naff though, particularly the mask.
Great. I’m slightly more excited for this movie now. If only they could digitally remove Blake Lively from the film, I’d be psyched. No, Conor, it’s not her hair color I don’t like.
@GloriousGodfrey im not digging the mask either bro. g.l. has a very easy and iconic suit, i really dont see why they had to tweak it so much.
@marshak75 I would imagine it’s because she’s not a very good actress, historically.
BINGO!
She was pretty good in “The Town”.