With Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno delayed until next October, there's plenty of time for the Academy Award winning director to build a cast of big ticket international actors. It turns out that's exactly what he's doing, as he's found quite a few faces to round out the cast of characters interacting with Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon, as he chases down disaster in Italy. As it turns out, one of those new faces helping Hanks avoid certain doom has helped humanity in the past – as part of the X-Men team.
Via a press release issued today, Sony Pictures announced that X-Men: Days Of Future Past star Omar Sy has been cast as Christoph Bruder, the leader of the European Center For Disease Control's paramilitary SRS unit in Ron Howard's Inferno. The threat in the film is a madman trying to release an old school plague upon Italy, with Langdon finding himself in the hospital at the beginning of his journey tied to Dante's classical poem from Hell. In case you're having trouble pegging Sy in his mutant form, we have a pretty clear picture of him in full costume as Bishop.
Of course, Omar Sy is just the tip of the casting iceberg for Inferno, as several other key roles have been recently cast as well. Most notably is the addition of Academy Award Nominee Felicity Jones, fresh off of her nod for her performance in The Theory Of Everything, as she's set to star as Dr. Sienna Brooks - Inferno's female lead. Rounding out the trio of internationally known co-starts is Irrfan Khan, who's starred in such films as Life Of Pi and The Amazing Spider-Man, and is cast as The Provost, the villain in Inferno's main story line. Interestingly enough, all three of these supporting actors have starred in a Marvel film produced outside of Marvel Studios' grasp, as Jones was recently set up as Felecia Hardy / Black Cat in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, up until the franchise entered a special arrangement with Marvel Studios and killed the series.
This trio of stars is just what a film like Inferno needs, especially considering that the Robert Langdon series has been on hiatus since 2009's Angels And Demons. With six years in between movies, and a book that was abandoned in the adaptation process for a reason, Inferno is the film that could make or break the Langdon series' streak of Hollywood success. With Ron Howard and Tom Hanks combining forces yet again, and with Omar Sy, Felicity Jones, and Irrfan Khan joining up as well, there's a good chance that this could lead to not only an eventual revival of an adaptation based off of The Lost Symbol, it could also lead to more Robert Langdon novels.
Inferno blazes a path to the box office on October 14, 2016.
