Cast off
By popular demand—well, it was actually suggested by me in an interview that I did with myself—it is again time to come up with a dream cast for another one of my novels.
Can you believe this is the sixth time I am doing this? Okay, not hard to believe I could write six daft blog posts, but I mean, can you believe that I have written six actual novels? Remember when I used to fill my film reviews and commentaries with angsty whining about why was I writing film reviews on the internet instead of writing The Great American Novel? Okay, it’s arguable whether I have written The Great American Novel, but at least I have written A Novel. And I’ve done it six whole different times.
No longer do I write angsty whining blog posts about not having written a novel (Great American or otherwise). Now I just write angsty whining posts about how no one has (yet) made a film adaptation of any of these novels, any of which could someday turn out to be recognized as the Great American one. Those Hollywood people will be sorry they didn’t grab up the rights when they could have had them for peanuts instead of waiting until there is a Hollywood bidding war over them.
And if they do grab up the rights to Last of the Tuath Dé, then they’ll probably be sorry that they didn’t instead grab up the rights to Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. That book would have been a whole lot cheaper to make into a movie since it would have only needed a budget for a couple of young actors, an old car and some location shoots in Mexico. Last of the Tuath Dé, on the other hand, is going to cost a lot more. It’s going to require a larger cast and location shoots all over the world. It’s going to require a lot of money for CGI because there’s a scene in the Netherworld, there’s a monster and there are demons. You’re going to need a castle in the Swiss Alps and a whole Mercenary/Cultist army deep in a European forest. No, it’s not going to be cheap, so you better have deep pockets if you even just want to talk about any of this with me over coffee. And you’re paying for the coffee.
Tell you what, though, I’ll save us both some time by coming up with a tentative cast and you can have your people talk with their people and line all that up before we sit down and talk budget and what my cut will be. See what a shark I’ve become? If you had reached out eight years ago when Max & Carly first came out, I would have probably given you the rights for free!
You know what will make this really easy for all of us? Let’s talk two-picture deal. Let’s make The Curse of Septimus Bridge and Last of the Tuath Dé all in one go, you know, like Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings movies. Then most of our work is done since I already came up with the cast for Septimus three years ago.
Let’s review who the lucky choices were back then. Unfortunately, we won’t be having Adrian Turner back because, with Septimus trapped in the Netherworld for all eternity, there really wouldn’t be much for him to do. Maria from Cork and Kyle from California are both back, but they have pretty small roles. For the record, those parts went to Saoirse Ronan/Sarah Bolger/Eve Hewson and Blake Jenner/Nick Robinson/Ansel Elgort, respectively. Hmmm… some of those might actually want serious money now—and bigger parts.
Celina Jade and Vasiliy Stepanov. Yes, they really are Izanami and Koschei.
And the main kick-ass demon-fighting heroic duo of the story? For Sapphire (aka Lola Blumquist), it was toss-up between Haley Lu Richardson and Zoey Deutch. For Izanami (aka Chiharu), I considered Sonoya Mizuno and Chantal Thuy but gave the nod to Celina Jade. To the right you can see her in the photo I included back when I did my Septimus casting. It’s paired with one of Vasiliy Stepanov, who got my nod to play fellow Demon Hunter Koschei. Of course, since Koschei died in the previous installment, he won’t be back for this movie. Or will he? I keep forgetting.
There are other roles to fill since the new book introduces a number of new characters. Too many to rack my pretty little head with right now. There’s Hadrian the Necromant. There are the old Masters Tsuru and Miyamoto. There’s Hathus, the brutish Mercenary—or is he a Legionnaire? There’s Alaric, leader of the Zen’ei. And there’s Bob the Software Wizard. And there are more. I warned you this was going to be expensive.
I can’t be bothered to cast all of them right now, but I’ll do one of them anyway. I nominate Dame Judi Dench to play Tsuru. No particular reason except that I’ve always wanted to meet Dame Judi Dench and this will probably be my only shot.
-S.L., 23 August 2022
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