Imagining The Best Cast For The MTG Movie

Despite all prior experience of cancelled project after cancelled project suggesting the newly announced Magic: The Gathering movie will never see the light of day, I’m holding out hope. This might be the one we actually get to watch and, with Legendary involved, it might even be somewhat good.

And so, with the naivety of optimism, I immediately started thinking about the potential cast. With a whole multiverse to explore and hundreds of characters to follow, here are a few of the biggest names I’d like to see.

Paapa Essiedu As Teferi Akosa

Everybody and their mother immediately leapt at the idea of Idris Elba as the time-bending former planeswalker Teferi, but that’s a boring answer. Instead, I’m proposing a much more obscure name with Paapa Essiedu.

Essiedu is probably best known these days as the lead of The Lazarus Project or his strange appearance in Alex Garland’s Men, but, for me, his defining role was in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet. He nails the mix of intensity and frivolity Teferi needs, and certainly has the screen presence for such a powerful character too.

Dan Stevens As Jace Beleren

I don’t particularly like Jace, and would be fine with him not being in the movie. But as the face of Magic, it’s daft to pretend he won’t be, and career character actor Dan Stevens, who has appeared in everything from Downton Abbey to The Guest to Beauty & the Beast as the titular Beast, would help make Beleren slightly less the absolute worst.

A smug, conniving game-player who always has to be one step ahead of his allies is a tricky character to make a likeable lead, but Stevens has previously taken equally pompous characters and made them likeable (see: Abigail). That, or fake us all out and send Jace off to be lost in Ixalan five minutes in and let other characters take the helm.

Avantika As Chandra Nalaar

One of my biggest pet peeves in Magic’s lore is that, despite being from the South East Asian-inspired plane of Avishkar, Chandra is as white as they come. Compare her to other Avishkari characters like her mother Pia Nalaar, or former planeswalker Saheeli Rai, and you can really tell Chandra was introduced years before Avishkar was ever even dreamt up.

The movie has a chance to fix that by casting an emerging actor of Indian heritage, and Avantika fits the bill. She’s not had too many leading roles, with Mean Girls being her biggest gig to date, though she did carry the Disney series Spin to steady success and could be on the precipice of a breakout with Ballerina Overdrive in production. Chandra is loud and impulsive, but not especially confident, which is something we saw Avantika pull off well as Karen.

Charlize Theron As Liliana Vess

Despite previous attempts to get MTG on screen casting Angelina Jolie as necromancer Liliana Vess, I can’t imagine anyone other than Charlize Theron in the role. Liliana is a fan favourite and needs a big name, and nobody exudes that classy-yet-sinister energy quite like her.

Is it an easy pick of a big-name actor? Yes. But the cast needs a few A-listers as well, and if she can pull off playing the evil queen in the godawful Huntsman: Winter’s War, she can pull off playing a much more multifaceted character like Liliana.

Karen Fukuhara As The Wanderer

The Wanderer was originally introduced as a mysterious figure who would appear, dispatch an enemy in a single slash of her sword, and then uncontrollably planeswalk away. It wasn’t until a few years after her debut that we learned she is the missing Emperor of Kamigawa, and since then she has become a powerful protector of the multiverse, appearing in Phyrexia: All Will Be One and Duskmourn: House of Horror.

If there’s any character I think should be the main focus of the movie, it’s The Wanderer. Kind but mysterious, and a fiend with a sword, her broken spark led her to having one of the most interesting backstories of any planeswalker. Having The Boys and Suicide Squad’s Karen Fukuhara explore that on-screen would be a far more way to introduce the disparate planes of the multiverse than Jace being annoying for two hours.

Robert Kazinsky As Ajani Goldmane

Robert Kazinsky hasn’t been up to too much lately, other than Star Trek: Section 31, but I still look back on his role as Orgrim Doomhammer from the rather naff Warcraft movie and think he’d be perfect for the role of my perfect man Ajani Goldmane.

Ajani is a hulking cat man with one eye and a huge axe, and he sure does know how to roar and fight. However, Ajani’s more known as a healer and constant support for his fellow planeswalkers. He’s kind and selfless, which is something we saw the briefest of flashes of with Orgrim in Warcraft – when he wasn’t busy smashing things with his hammer.

Alfred Molina As Daretti

I didn’t love Daretti until the Aetherdrift story, but now he’s here, I’ll be inconsolable if my favourite Goblin mechanic doesn’t show up. I don’t need him to have a main role, but he needs to be somewhere. As a treat. Just for me.

Both Alfred Molina’s natural English accent and the American twang he uses in movies like Spider-Man and Monsters University would fit Daretti perfectly. Gravelly without sounding too posh, Molina’s roles tend to combine intelligence and brashness in a way that’d be a slam dunk for Daretti and his often explosive inventions.

Magic: The Gathering

Franchise

Magic: The Gathering

Original Release Date

August 5, 1993

Player Count

2+

Age Recommendation

13+

Length per Game

Variable

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