Sterling K. Brown, Rita Ora and John Kim have boarded the live-action feature Voltron based on the mecha anime that Rawson Marshall Thurber is directing for Amazon MGM Studios. The trio join Henry Cavill and relative newcomer Daniel Quinn-Toye to star in the ensemble piece that gets underway December in Australia.
Voltron is based on the Japanese sci-fi series Beast King GoLion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV. World Events edited and dubbed the series as a syndicated show, naming it Voltron: Defender of the Universe, which ran in the mid-1980s. The premise centered on five young pilots in a battalion named the Robot Lions, which are vehicles that join together to form a mega-robot known as Voltron.
While plot details for the feature remain under the helmet, Thurber shared a video message with Voltron fans during VoltCon, held in October in Indianapolis, in which he said, “I want to make sure that we stay true to the heart and the spirit of Voltron. In this film, we’re going to be introducing an entirely new generation of pilots. We’ve reimagined Voltron for the live-action world, but we’re going to stay true to … those iconic elements that you love, that I love.” Thurber wrote the script with Ellen Shanman.
Brown earned an Oscar nomination for his performance opposite Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction, Amazon MGM’s acclaimed dramedy directed by Cord Jefferson. Brown will star in and executive produce the Hulu drama series Paradise, created by Dan Fogelman, and is due to begin production on Elegance Bratton’s By Any Means with Mark Wahlberg. The busy actor recently wrapped production on Hulu’s limited series Washington Black and appeared opposite Jennifer Lopez in Netflix’s sci-fi flick Atlas.
Ora is a singer-songwriter with over 10 billion global streams and 13 Top 10 U.K. singles, four of which have gone to No. 1. The multihyphenate has taken on hosting, judging and panelist gigs on various show and made inroads into with appearances in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, Detective Pikachu and most recently, Disney’s Descendants: The Rise of Red.
Aussie Kim currently appears in Prime Video’s Cruel Intentions, the television reimagining of the 1999 cult classic. Among his credits are the Apple TV+ series, The Last Thing He Told Me, opposite Jennifer Garner and Angourie Rice, The CW’s Nancy Drew and TNT’s The Librarians. He also notched credits on movies such as Netflix’s love story Purple Hearts and Warner Bros. thriller The Little Things.
