Henry Cavill Goes From Superman to Super Robot, Joins Amazon MGM 'Voltron'

Cavill joins Daniel Quinn-Toye in Rawson Marshall Thurber’s live action adaptation of the beloved anime

Henry Cavill has already left his red cape and temporary adamantium claws behind, and now he’s taking on a second armor set. While Games Workshop and Amazon work out creative guidelines for their Warhammer 40,000 TV series he is set to star in and executive produce, the British actor has joined Amazon MGM Studios’s live-action Voltron movie.

Cavill’s casting brings major star power to a film that has only before him cast Daniel Quinn-Toye, the nearly 22-year-old actor whose previous work is largely in theater, as the “male lead”. It is such an age gap that if the plot details that haven’t been revealed yet are going to be identical to either the original 1980s series or the Legendary Defender animated series from Netflix and DreamWorks Animation, there are two options for who he could be. The first is Coran, the royal advisor to Princess Allura's family, and, at least in the latter, the last known male Altean, dutiful and protective. He was voiced by Peter Cullen in the original and Rhys Darby in Legendary Defender. The other is Emperor (or King in the original) Zarkon of the Galra Empire, conqueror of most of the known universe over ten millennia, the former Black Paladin driven by the corruption by quintessence, at least in Legendary Defender. There, Zarkon was voiced by Neil Kaplan, and by Jack Angel in the original.

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Cavill spent a decade as the Superman of the DCEU and left his role as Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher when it looked like his participation as Superman was about to pick up again, only to be rebooted out of the role with the announcement of the new DC Universe. He recently cameoed as a Wolverine variant in Deadpool and Wolverine, and starred in Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle and Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Early next year he has another Ritchie action thriller In the Grey, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza Gonzalez. He’s also still attached to Chad Stahelski’s long-gestating Highlander reboot, which finally shoots next year.

Voltron is the franchise born from an American adaptation that dubbed Beast King GoLion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV into Voltron: Defender of the Universe in the mid-1980s. The premise centered on five young pilots in a battalion of Robot Lions that join together to form Voltron, a giant mech. The film is being directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and aiming for a fall Australia shoot. Thurber is also writing the script with Ellen Shanman and among the producers with Todd Lieberman via Hidden Pictures, World Events Productions’ Bob Koplar, and Hobie Films’ David Hoberman.

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter