Okay, I'm shooting from the hip here and I haven't seen anybody else's cast yet... but I'm doing this anyway cause I miss Dreamcasting.
Clockwise, from upper left: Morena Baccarin, Keira Knightley, Jeri Ryan, Henry Simmons,
Danny Trejo, Isaiah Washington, Elijah Wood
Zatanna - Zatanna Zatara contrasts her magical nigh-omnipotence with a playful sense of showmanship and an almost kidding sense of humor. Enter
Morena Baccarin, who is best known to UC members as Inara Serra, the charismatically sharp-tongued Companion on TV's
Firefly. Since
Firefly, Baccarin has continued to gain the attention of science fiction fans in her portrayal of Adria, the genetically engineered superpowered woman-child on
Stargate SG-1.
Shining Knight - The first thing I wanted when casting Ystina was an actress who not just fakes a knightly demeanor, but is androgynous enough to pull off the cross dressing business. I was initially reluctant to place
Keira Knightley in the role, but her boyish figure has been frequently documented by celebrity slander blogs, and I couldn't resist. Regardless, the most important asset on Knightley's resume is her insistence on portraying feisty girls playing tough with the men in films like
Bend It Like Beckham and
Domino.
Bulleteer - If she can pull herself away from 'serious TV' like
Shark and stomach the notion of wearing anatomically revealing wardrobe again,
Jeri Ryan would be great as the reluctant crimefighter. Ryan is most famous for her portrayal of Seven of Nine from
Star Trek: Voyager, a Borg drone searching for a humanity she never grew up to have. That's a perfect role to prepare for a heroine who is perennially depressed and looking for a higher purpose.
Manhattan Guardian - Just an honest guy looking for an honest living, even if that means being the crime-stopping face of journalism. Most of you will recognize
Henry Simmons as District Attorney Investigator Isaac Wright on CBS'
Shark. But it's his honest Joe appeal as Detective Baldwin Jones that got my attention on
NYPD Blue and one can easily imagine him keeping the coolest of heads when surrounded by subway pirates.
Frankenstein - I can already see it now: everyone before me has already cast Ron Perlman. Or some wrestler. But in my opinion, the original bad *** of few words is
Danny Trejo. This is a man who has been to prison and whose characters are named after knives and other sharp objects. To quote Fametracker, "He is so bad-*** he now gets paid oodles of money to do pretty much exactly what he used to do every day for free." I don't need to justify this any further.
Mister Miracle - Most keen film observers --- meaning anyone with an eidetic memory for movies like me --- will remember
Isaiah Washington playing a large number of forgettable criminal types in a large number of forgettable movies. But the rest of you humans probably know him as the almost non-human overachieving cardio-thoracic surgeon on
Grey's Anatomy. It doesn't take a leap of logic to see him playing Mister Miracle, essentially an overachieving showman looking for the next great escape... even if it means from the center of a black hole.
Klarion, the Witch-Boy - Two aspects of
Elijah Wood make him the only choice to play Klarion Bleak: (1) His ability to play unsettlingly creepy young men, whether it's a Ring-addled hobbit in
The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the mute sociopath Kevin in
Frank Miller's Sin City. (2) His early career experience playing young boys with anti-authoritarian sensibilities in films like
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
North. Add the former to the latter, and you have Klarion. No question about it.
