Brandon T. Jackson got his breakout role last summer, playing the actual black guy in Tropic Thunder who got to make fun of Robert Downey Jr. And now he's parlayed that fame, and that excellent comedic timing, into a role in another big-budget movie. Except, uh, he'll be playing the sidekick to a 16-year-old, and his character is a satyr?
The movie in question is Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, an adaptation of a children's book series about a young boy who discovers his real father is the Greek god Poseidon. Variety reports that teenage Logan Lerman will play the titular character, with Jackson as his best friend Grover. Apparently Fox 2000 is taking a page out of the Harry Potter playbook, and wants to cast big-name actors in some of the smaller roles, as gods. Will this be the American answer to the giant Harry Potter casts, giving the likes of Frank Langella and Meryl Streep a chance to wear silly costumes.
The production is getting started in April, which doesn't give them long to convince all those legendary stars to pick up and go to Europe to a month to film an adventure movie. So thus far Jackson's been in a movie filming in Hawaii and packed with stars, and now is heading to Europe to do essentially the same thing? I'd probably be willing to play a satyr too for those kinds of perks.
