With six seasons of Game of Thrones already under her belt, Maisie Williams is no stranger to dabbling with history on screen, but The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the young actress is poised to journey even further back in time – all the way to the Bronze Age for Aardman’s prehistoric animation Early Man.
Rubbing shoulders with Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston on the film’s casting docket, we understand Williams will play the part of Goona, a “gallant and indomitable rebel” who strikes up an unusual friendship with Dug (Redmayne), the bumbling lead of Early Man. From there, our two mismatched heroes navigate a clash between the Stone Age and Bronze Age civilizations, and will no doubt cause quite the ruckus while attempting to do so.
Hiddleston, meanwhile, recently climbed on board to play Lord Nooth, a ridiculously pompous governor/tyrant who hails from the Bronze Age town. He’s the de facto villain, essentially, and will be causing all sorts of chaos for Dug and Goona. Headed up by Nick Park, Early Man heralds the director’s first return to the world of stop-motion animation since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now, more than a decade later, the Wallace & Gromit creator is ready to engineer a new family-friendly adventure.
For Williams, this isn’t the first time that the actress has stepped into the voice booth for a role, after lending her vocal chords to Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken series three years ago. Other projects in the pipeline include Netflix original iBoy, before the two-season finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which may run a little longer than expected.
Aardman has partnered with StudioCanal to launch Early Man into UK theaters on January 26, 2018. It’ll then open in France on January 31, 2018, before uprooting for Germany on March 15th and Australia/NZ on March 29th, 2018.
Set at the dawn of time, when prehistoric creatures and woolly mammoths roamed the earth, Early Man tells the story of how plucky caveman Dug, along with sidekick Hognob, unites his tribe against the mighty Bronze Age in a battle to beat them at their own game. It also marks Nick Park’s first feature film since the Academy Award-winning Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Early Man unleashes an unforgettable cast of hilarious new characters.
