The races to play Abin Sur and Pieface in the Green Lantern movie have just ended, according to the Hollywood Reporter. New Zealanders Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi have landed the roles, respectively.
I hadn’t heard of Waititi before today, but he’s a veritable jack of all of trades in entertainment, having been an actor, a comedian and, most recently, the writer and director of the quirky dress-up movie SHARK VS. EAGLE. Interestingly, the trades don’t name his character as Tom “Pie Face” Kalmaku, but keep the role description to simply “test pilot Hal Jordan’s best friend.” I suspect that probably has something to do with “Pieface” not exactly being the most PC-name, something DC’s had issues with reconciling over the years. Perhaps the crew’s still in the process of picking a new name for Jordan’s Alaskan sidekick.
The news of Morrison playing Abin Sur, Jordan’s alien predecessor, is pleasing to me as I enjoyed him as Jango Fett in STAR WARS. Even beyond that, he’s always come across as getting a real kick out of his involvement in the movies and all their tie-ins like the REPUBLIC COMMANDO game. A lot of actors seem to be dragging their heals when promoting a big genre movie, but Morrison's always seemed to relish it.
I especially enjoyed this back and forth one time during a convention Q&A
“Mr. Morrison, what’s it like having your own action figure?”
“Oh, it’s great, you know, because it means I’m the only man in the world who can play with himself in public and not be embarrassed!”
AY-OH! And so on. I’m going to ahead and also putting it out there that it’s fitting an actor from STAR WARS would have a part in GREEN LANTERN, as both stories draw inspiration from the classic pulp series, LENSMEN.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.
