Earlier this month, we told you about the casting of Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men: Origins) and Robert Maillet (Pacific Rim, Sherlock Holmes) as baddies in the big screen adaptation of Cassandra Clare‘s New York Times best-selling YA series The Mortal Instruments.
More delighting casting news has been announced for this film helmed by Harald Zwart (The Karate Kid, One Night at McCool’s). Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Jared Harris (Mad Men, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) have been cast in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. According to Clare’s own blog, Headey will play Jocelyn Fray and Harris to play Hodge Starkweather. Here’s what she had to say about these casting decisions:
“Jocelyn is a really fun character to write. She’s overprotective (but for a reason) and often really unyielding and unsympathetic, but she’s also a heroine who saved the world from Valentine, endured a lot of loss, and can execute some pretty badass moves. Moral ambiguity is always fun to play and who does it better than the gorgeous and talented Lena Headey. You probably know her best as Cersei from Game of Thrones. I have had an actress crush on Lena for years so when they told me she was cast I did a happy dance and hit Sarah Rees Brennan on the head with a spoon. Actually I would have done that last bit anyway. Lena is amazing and I think she will be amazing as Jocelyn. I am super psyched.”
“Hodge is also a really complicated character. He’s not entirely bad, not entirely good. He’s a brilliant man led down a bad path a long time ago and he can’t turn back, but he does love those kids he tutored. So if you’ve seen either Mad Men or Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (in which he was Moriarty), you know this guy, and you know he’s fantastic at moral ambiguity. He’s got SAG awards and Emmys all over the place and I think he’ll really nail Hodge’s moral dilemma. Welcome, Jared!”
Canadian model turned actor, Godfrey Gao (101 Proposals, All About Women) has also been added to the cast to play Magnus Bane. Clare again on the casting:
“yes it is MAGNUS!!!
So after an exhaustive search during which many, many hot Asian men were considered by the casting director (her job, so painful), the director, and the seventy-odd other dudes who have to sign off on this kind of thing, I can confidently tell you that our Magnus may be …
THE HOTTEST MAN IN THE WORLD.
Which is only fitting for Magnus, of course.
Our Magnus is:
Godfrey Gao.”
Clearly, Clare is happy with these casting decisions for this joint production between Screen Gems, Constantin Films, and Unique Features.
Synopsis for City of Bones, the first book of The Mortal Instruments series:
City of Bones begins with a sixteen-year old girl named Clary Fray (Lily Collins,) who lives in New York with her mother, an artist. She comes home one night to find her apartment ransacked, her mother gone — and a slavering demon ready to tear off her head. Once the demon’s dealt with, Clary follows the clues to her mother’s disappearance into an alternate New York filled with hideous demons, hard-partying warlocks, not-what-they-seem vampires, an army of werewolves and the scariest thing of all: the secrets of her mother’s past. She also finds herself torn between two boys — her best friend Simon, for whom she’s developing new feelings, and the mysterious demon hunter Jace, who has a past more tangled than her own. She becomes a part of the secret word of the demon hunters, or Nephilim, and as she does discovers she might be more connected to them than she originally thought.
The Mortal Instruments is slated to hit theaters August 23, 2013.
