Willem Dafoe Circles ‘Pacific Rim,’ Kazinsky In

Published by Jeff Leins on
http://www.newsinfilm.com/2011/07/29/willem-dafoe-circles-pacific-rim-rob-kazinsky-joins-the-cast/



Guillermo del Toro has added British actor Rob Kazinsky to the increasingly impressive cast of Pacific Rim, his large scale monster movie scheduled for July 2013. Spider-Man villain and Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe is circling a role and is in early talks according to Variety.

Kazinsky will play a member of the military team tasked with strapping into massive mechanized robots and battling Godzilla-sized monsters that continually emerge from a rift in the Pacific Ocean. The main focus, however, will be on “Sons of Anarchy” actor Charlie Hunnam and his unlikely Japanese partner, Babel actress Rinko Kikuchi. ”The Wire” vet Idris Elba is Stacker Pentecost, the leader of the team.

If Dafoe accepts, he will play a rogue scientist (named Ivo Czerny in an early draft by screenwriter Travis Beacham) who has experience with the threatening phenomenon. Charlie Day (of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” fame) plays an “unkempt” academic who, with the help of reporter Felicity “Flick” Kincaid (uncast), searches for the source of and solution to the leak.

Kazinsky made headlines in April when he exited his dwarf role in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit for “personal reasons.” Del Toro knows a thing or two about that after bailing on the two-part J.R.R. Tolkien epic during pre-production. The 27-year-old actor is also a cast member on Red Tails, George Lucas’ Tuskegee Airmen WWII passion project.

Del Toro spoke about the project at Comic-Con this month and said, “It is my duty to film the finest f-cking monsters ever committed to the screen. And the greatest f-cking robots ever committed to screen. That’s a pledge.”