After a long and drawn out mystery, Mark Hamill is going to be Hollywood’s most demonic doll. The Star Wars stalwart who has portrayed Luke Skywalker and other iconic characters in many feature films to date will provide the voice of the iconic horror character Chucky in the Orion Pictures revival of the Child’s Play franchise.
The news was announced at Orion’s pane presentation today at WonderCon, in Anaheim. Fans bellowed their excitement when Hamill appeared on overhead video screens in a taped greeting.
“If you’re wondering who’s going to play Chucky in the new Child’s Play,” the bearded Hamill said, “you’re looking at him.”
"People let me tell you 'bout my best friend…"🎶
The wicked fun begins when @ChildsPlayMovie is unleashed in theaters: Friday, June 21st 2019. #SoLuckyImChucky 🤪 @MGM_Studios @OrionPictures pic.twitter.com/ExOYuwj9sP— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) March 31, 2019
MarkHamill joins a cast that includes Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, and Brian Tyree Henry in the “contemporary re-imagining” of the 1988 horror hit that follows the malevolent path of a Buddi doll that is sentient, bloodthirsty, and not as friendly as his smile.
Mark Hamill is an accomplished voice actor with scores of credits in animated films, television shows, video games, radio dramas, and web projects. The signature role among his voice credits to date is the Joker, the DC Comics villain he portrayed first in 1992 on Batman: The Animated Series and then it’s tie-in 1993 feature film, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The maniacal energy Hamill has brought to the Joker in follow-up animation projects (as well as video games, among them Arkham Asylum) has established the Clown Prince of Crime as perhaps the best-reviewed role of Hamill’s entire acting career.
Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the original Child’s Play, which effectively melded the slasher terror of Halloween with the equally scary Cabbage Patch Dolls fad to deliver historic horror results. The original became such a cult classic that Chucky now ranks up with Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, Pinhead, and Ghostface on the all-time honor roll of one-name icons of R-rated horror. The movie has echoed throughout pop culture and influenced non-horror works, too, among them Toy Story and Ted.
The remake has not been without it’s controversy online. The exclusion of everyone who was involved in the original Child’s Play movie series, and the very popular follow up films Curse of Chucky & Cult of Chucky, has had a lot of long time fans up in arms about this rebooted version which includes using the hashtag #NotMyChucky. The hashtag was brought to light after Bride of Chucky through Cult of Chucky actress Jennifer Tilly posted her disappointment in none of the original cast, crew, writers or directors of the iconic killer doll was included or even asked about the remake, something that came about after Don Mancini, the head writer on all past Chucky related films and TV appearances, announced that he is currently in production of a TV series based around the Chucky character and is a follow up to the ending to Cult of Chucky.
New “Chucky” movie? Ummm…no. Tiffany and I are gonna sit this one out. #NotmyChucky pic.twitter.com/OcILcYLfXe
— Jennifer Tilly (@JenniferTilly) February 8, 2019
In the new Child’s Play, Mark Hamill will play a sinister entity that has been updated to match today’s marketplace concepts of playthings. This time around, Buddi is an “Artificial Intelligence human companion” manufactured by the Kaslan Corp, the world’s leading developer of interactive tech products for home and lifestyle. When Karen (Plaza), a single mother, gifts one of the state-of-the-art toys to her son, Andy (Bateman), playtime takes a terrifying turn.
Orion Pictures will release Child’s Play on June 21 in theaters everywhere.
