With “Lost” finally reaching its conclusion on Sunday night, some of the show’s cast are starting to move on. Evangeline Lilly recently signed on to the Hugh Jackman robot-boxing movie “Real Steel,” for instance, while Daniel Dae Kim is in the “Hawaii Five-O” TV remake.
Meanwhile, our favorite alliterative actor in the show, Adewale Akinnuote-Agbaje, who famously scuppered the writers’ plans when he bailed on the show after a too-brief series arc as drug-lord-turned-priest Mr. Eko, has just joined Universal’s currently-shooting prequel to “The Thing,” in the role of Derek Jameson.
Filming has been underway for weeks now, so it’s unclear if Akinnuote-Agbaje has just been cast, or if he’s been involved since the start. The cast is led by Joel Edgerton and the future ex-Mrs. Playlist, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and is being directed by newcomer Matthis van Heijningen Jr.
The original is pretty much our favorite horror film, so we’re deeply skeptical of this project, but the cast is promising, mostly being made up of bearded Norwegian actors (the plot takes place at the Norwegian arctic base glimpsed in the original), which suggests something slightly more uncompromising than a group of attractive stars from “Gossip Girl” or something. And at least it’s a step-up for Akinnuote-Agbaje, who was last seen in “G.I. Joe”…