*UPDATE* Wow. The mad rush of casting on The Wolverine continues as THR notes that Brian Tee, who played the Drift King in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, has also signed on. He'll be taking on the role of Noburo Mori, a corrupt official who Lord Shingen has set to marry his daughter Mariko against her will. * The original story is below....
Well, that didn't take long, did it? It was only a couple of hours ago we learned about a whole host of new additions to the cast of The Wolverine, and at the time I stated that the only role of importance left was for the Silver Samurai. And here it is, with Variety reporting that Will Yun Lee will go sword-to-claw with Hugh Jackman in the superhero flick.
Kenichio Harada aka the Silver Samurai is the half-brother to Mariko Yashida, who Wolverine falls in love with while in Japan searching for clues to his past. She's the daughter to Lord Shingen Yashida, the leader of a criminal yakuza organization. Shingen and Harada don't want Wolverine anywhere near their clan, which leads to a bunch of stuff about warrior and samurai honor codes. It's a great story, based on the classic run by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, but expect to see some tweaks in the film version.
Yun Lee probably isn't known to most people, but he's been in a superhero movie before, and it even has some ties to Wolverine and the Clan Yashida. He had a role in Elektra, the Daredevil spinoff that had Jennifer Garner in the title role. Yun Lee played Kirigi, a resurrected ninja working for a group known as The Hand, which also counted Lord Shingen as a member. That's just geeky comic book stuff, though. It won't have any impact on this story.James Mangold is directing The Wolverine for a July 26th 2013 release.
