WILLOW Series Showrunner Says He Hopes That Val Kilmer's Madmartigan Storyline Is "Far From Over"
The 1988 fantasy adventure film Willow was such a fun movie that fans have continued to love through the decades. The tenacious spirit of the story’s protagonist Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), mixed with the humor and quick-witted charm of Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan made the movie a rewatchable romp we couldn’t get enough of.
Fans had been wondering about and asking for a sequel to the movie over the years, so when we heard that the continuation of the story would be realized in a whole series, it was pretty exciting. Davis confirmed his reprisal first, then we heard that the plan was for Kilmer to return to the series, but with his recent battle with throat cancer and the series filming during the pandemic, the risk was too great, so all we got was the character’s voice talking to his daughter Kit (Ruby Cruz), a couple of times during the season. The voice we heard was the actor’s son, Jack Kilmer, standing in for his dad, which was cool, but it left us to wonder if that meant the end of Val’s Madmartigan storyline.
In a recent interview with showrunner Jonathan Kasdan, he talked about his hopes that Val Kilmer will be back to play the part for more stories, saying:
"No. We hope not, in a lot of ways. One of the challenges of this thing is you have a very clear idea in your head of exactly what you'd like to do, and then you hope you have the opportunity to do that thing. And so for him particularly, in the idealized version of how we continue this story, it's far from over. And we've got a lot of stuff we'd like to do because there's this deep love for Val, not just in the world, but from within our family here at Lucasfilm and I think nothing would give everyone more joy than to see him on the set, you know?"
I was so sad not to see him return to the series in the way we were all hoping. I have my fingers crossed that he continues to improve health-wise, and is able to appear as Madmartigan once more!
via: CB