Alfred Molina To Take Charge of Prince of Persia

Hopefully Alfred Molina can teach that young Prince a thing or three.

Variety says that Alfred Molina has joined the cast of Prince of Persia. He’ll play Sheik Amar, who is supposed to be a “mentor” to the Prince. Said Prince of course will be played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The illustrious Sir Ben Kingsley and oh yeah, Gemma “Latest Bond Girl” Arterton are also in the cast. Mike Newell is directing the adaptation of the video game.

What can I say about Molina? If you don’t know, he’s a fantastic stage actor with a long list of theater credits. He’s done plenty of film work (do you all remember his bit in the opening sequence of Raiders?), but is probably best known now for his turn as Doc Ock, the villain of Spider-Man 2, in my opinion the best villain of the Spidey series. Okay, there have only been four villains total (unless you want to count the writers of 3), so it’s not like he has to beat a huge list, but seriously, he was just tremendous in that movie. It’s easy to settle for being a cartoon when you’re playing a villain, particularly in a superhero movie. But Molina played Doc Ock as a real, full person and that made the whole movie better.

So here’s a word to the cast–if Molina is mentoring the Prince to do whatever he’s supposed to do as a hero, see if he can slip in a few acting tips as well. It’s not like none of you can’t use them.

Filming for the Prince of Persia is set to begin in July in the UK and Morocco (what, you were expecting Persia, otherwise known as Iran?).