Soldado Casts Transformers Star Isabela Moner

Rising star Isabela Moner has secured a place in Soldado, according to Deadline, the starry follow-up to 2015’s Sicario that takes many of the core characters, themes, and story beats of Denis Villeneuve’s thriller and spins them out in a new direction.

Moner, who will soon be seen toeing the line between Autobot and Decepticon in next year’s Transformers: The Last Knight, now joins a cast comprised of faces old and new: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, and Catherine Keener, who climbed aboard back in October as a CIA superior. That places Keener in charge of Brolin’s morally questionable agent Matt Graver, while Del Toro is set to reprise the role of Alejandro Gillick, a shadowy gun-for-hire who is all but set to take point as the protagonist of Soldado in place of Emily Blunt.

Kate Macer’s harrowing story is all wrapped up, it seems, and speaking of creative turnarounds, director Stefano Sollima will take over from Denis Villeneuve, who has been busy with Arrival and next year’s long-in-development sequel Blade Runner 2049. One key member of the creative team that will be returning is screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, and though story details are few and far between at such an early stage, Deadline notes that Moner has landed the role of a “stubborn daughter of the drug cartel leader that becomes the center of Matt and Alejandro‘s undercover operation to provoke a war that her daddy will surely lose.”

Production is just now beginning to grind into gear on the set of Soldado. No word yet on a specific release date, but expect Sollima’s actioner to debut towards the latter stages of 2017. Transformers: The Last Knight, meanwhile, hits theaters June 23, 2017.