“Game of Thrones” hasn’t just been one of the best series of the just-finished TV seasons, one that improved week-on-week, but it also proved to be a big hit, increasing its audience by nearly 40% between its premiere and its finale on Sunday. The survivors are set to get going on a second season in July, but it’s undoubtedly given a career boost to everyone involved, even those who were gruesomely dispatched across the first season.
Jason Momoa, the veteran of “Baywatch Nights” and “Stargate: Atlantis,” played savage leader Khal Drogo in the show. We’d been a little skeptical of Momoa’s acting chops when he was cast as the new “Conan” (and to be fair, early looks at that film suggest we were correct) but he was well cast in the HBO show, aided by the fact that barely any of his lines were in English, and certainly has potential to be one of the next wave of action stars; at the very least, he’s proven he can pull a man’s tongue out through his throat.
And it seems he’s just got the blessing of a veteran in the field: Latino Review reports that Momoa has been cast as the villain opposite Sylvester Stallone in the untitled actioner currently known as “Headshot.” The plot involves Stallone as a Louisiana hitman who teams up with an NYC cop (to be played by “Fast Five” star Sung Kang) in order to take revenge on the men who killed their partners, at least one of whom is presumably Momoa.
Based on a graphic novel known as “Bullet to the Head,” it sounds pretty generic, but we’re intrigued, because the film marks the return of the great Walter Hill, who helmed genre classics like “The Driver,” “The Warriors,” “48 Hours” and “Trespass.” Hill is capable of bad work, as anyone who’s seen “Supernova” or “Another 48 Hours” can attest to, but we hope his decade away from the screen has made him hungry, rather than rusty. Sarah Shahi joined the cast yesterday as well, and filming begins soon, with Warner Bros. likely to release the film some time in 2012.