From stoic Jedi masters to slightly more emotive men who find and kill people, Liam Neeson has a trend of playing slick dispatchers of pain. And now, after news broke of his casting in the upcoming prequel Kingsman: The Great Game, this career trend looks set to continue. The prequel is currently pencilled in for a February 2020 release, and the cast is already stacked aside from Qui-Gon Jinn himself.
Rhys Ifans, known for the Harry Potter films and The Amazing Spider-Man, is in talks to portray a character described as “a dangerous and manipulative Russian mystic,” while Captain America: Civil War’s Daniel Bruhl and Game of Thrones star Charles Dance have also joined the production in currently undisclosed roles.
If we had to guess, though, Bruhl’s knack for bringing to life creepy European villains likely means he’s been cast as a Russian ally of Rasputin’s, who we know we’ll see in the film. Meanwhile, Dance is often seen playing posh authority figures, and given that The Great Game is set around the British military in World War I, he might be showing up as a high ranking officer.
Elsewhere, we’ve also got Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and more, and though it’s unclear when exactly the movie will take place, we’ve got a feeling it’ll be the early 1920s, as we see the origins of the Kingsman as they seek to define themselves in the world.
Whatever it is that Vaughn’s got cooked up for us though, between this and Kingsman 3, which will conclude the story of Eggsy and Harry, we’ve got much to look forward to from this particular franchise. And given how enjoyable Kingsman: The Secret Service was, that can only be a good thing.