Sigourney Weaver has joined the cast of Marvel’s The Defenders, the entertainment company announced at New York Comic Con on Saturday.
It’s a mystery who Weaver will play – the eight-episode Defenders miniseries will bring together Netflix’s four main Marvel series, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil, and will premiere some time in 2017, but few cast or plot details have been announced.
Weaver, perhaps best-known for her starring role in the Alien franchise and her part in the Ghostbusters films, has been nominated for Oscars three times and appears regularly in the theatre in New York, where all five series are set.
In a move almost identical to its announcement of the casting of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel at San Diego Comic Con’s Marvel movies panel – Larson, too, took the stage, smiled, and left – the announcement came at the end of a New York Comic Con preview presentation for upcoming show Iron Fist.
Marvel TV executive Jeph Loeb warned the audience not to leave the preview early or they’d miss something good: Don’t leave “until you hear, like in Ferris Beuller, ‘It’s over, go home,’” Loeb cautioned.
So at the end of the presentation Loeb introduced unannounced panel guests Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter and Luke Cage – Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage themselves – who joined Iron Fist’s Finn Jones on stage to pose for pictures, and then pose for pictures again when Weaver joined them.
Previews of Iron Fist emphasized a more martial-arts-heavy feel even than Iron Fist’s fight-filled predecessor on Netflix, Daredevil. The scenes previewed included a tense fight down a long hallway and a bloody two-on-one duel in a steel cage.
Marvel’s intense secrecy around its film and TV products was on full display during the presentation, though the cast was diplomatic: “We didn’t actually get the scripts until we were just about to shoot them,” actor David Wenham, who plays villain Harold Meachum on the show, told the audience. “Marvel is a very secretive organization - and that gave us a wonderful spontaneity.”
Still, when a clip rolled showing Jessica Henwick’s character Colleen Wing beat down two huge men in a mixed-martial-arts-style brawl, the cast quietly moved to the edge of the stage so they could see the footage for the first time themselves.
The audience had ears for every reference to every other show, cheering during the new footage at mentions of Daredevil antagonists The Hand, as well as Carrie-Ann Moss’s character Hogarth from Netflix show Jessica Jones.
There were more surprise guests, as well: Jon Bernthal and Deborah Ann Woll from The Punisher showed up at the end of the presentation to announce the start of production on that show – also on Netflix – and Erik LaRay Harvey, who plays the villain Diamondback on Luke Cage, opened the presentation.
The premiere of Luke Cage is slated for 17 March 2017.
