Fans are mere days away from seeing Godzilla return to the big screen in Takashi Yamazaki’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero. And, to mark the occasion, the filmmaker has begun to cast his follow-up. It will be his English-language debut, feature giant freaking robots, and star at least one acting legend.
The movie is called Grandgear, and it’s set for release on January 14, 2028. Not much is known about the film outside of a brief teaser shown at CinemaCon earlier this year but, Deadline just revealed its first three cast members. Yamazaki has cast White Lotus star Sam Nivola and How to Train Your Dragon’s Nico Parker as the two leads, with Oscar-nominee Paul Giamatti joining the group too.
It’s unclear what roles each actor is playing, but according to the trade, “while Giamatti was coveted for his role, the search for the two most prominent parts in the film was a thorough one and led to a round of [chemistry] tests that landed Nivola and Parker the parts.”
As mentioned, Nivola is best known for playing the younger brother on the most recent season of The White Lotus. And though he’s made a few other films beyond that, this will be his biggest movie role to date. He’s also the son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola.
Parker has been lighting up screens big and small for the past few years. The daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton and writer-director Ol Parker is probably best known for playing Astrid in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, and reprising it in the upcoming sequel. However, she also appeared in the first season of The Last of Us and made her film debut in Tim Burton’s Dumbo, among others.
Paul Giamatti needs no real recap. He’s Paul Giamatti. However, it’s worth mentioning that in recent years he’s made it clear he wants to do more genre film, and this certainly fits the bill.
As for what Grandgear is about, we don’t know specifically, but here’s how I described the footage that screened earlier this year:
“The footage showed a sleek, almost Gundam-type robot in the middle of the street posing and facing off with something. Across from it, there’s another robot, this one still made of metal but with a more alien look. (Its head was shaped like a semi-obscure Star Wars alien called an “Amani.”) The two robots run at each other and crash, with one of them smashing a huge gun out of the hand of the other. The gun flips backward in slow motion, crashing on the street, destroying a car.”
Grandgear is coming in January 2028.
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