Star Wars officially announced the cast of The Mandalorian and it’s a bit weird — in all the best ways.
Pedro Pascal may be the titular Mandalorian, but the cast of the Disney+ series just got real weird. Disney announced today that the Star Wars series will include some of your favorite television stars and some decidedly more niche individuals. The Mandalorian cast includes Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, and Werner Herzog.
That’s right. Werner Herzog is now in a Star War.
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Previously announced cast includes Nick Nolte, Pascal, and Gina Carano. Also in the Dec. 12 press release are Emily Swallow and Omid Abtahi who you know from Supernatural and American Gods, respectively.
“We’re having a great time working with this incredibly talented group and excited for everyone to see what we’re up to,” Jon Favreau said in the release.
Hopefully more women will be announced soon, please and thank you, but this an impressive start.
However, while the rounded out cast is very cool — it’s always good to see Esposito whether he’s playing a hero or a villain, and Weathers is legendary in his own right — the inclusion of Herzog definitely stands out. Not only is it a very strong choice, it’s kind of a fan’s dream. If you thought The Mandalorian was going to be too corporate, get ready, because Herzog has quite the cult following.
Herzog is known primarily as an artsy German documentary filmmaker, though the enigmatic auteur has done a little bit of everything, including fiction films and works for the stage, including opera. His most famous films are Aquirre, The Wrath Of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Grizzly Man. He’s even done a bit of acting before. He was in Jack Reacher, and in the last three years guest-starred on both Parks and Recreation and Rick and Morty.
What does this mean? Will the live action Star Wars series have a documentary episode, or will Herzog be playing some kind of expressionistic guru?
Don’t forget, the list of directors for the streaming series includes Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, Rick Famuyiwa, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi. There’s a lot of directions that this could go, and this casting news is honestly pretty exciting.
The Mandalorian is scheduled to come out in 2019 on Disney+