This weekend, moviegoers get to see Val Kilmer reprise his role of Iceman in Top Gun: Maverick. It’s only one scene and it’s bittersweet: Kilmer spent two years battling throat cancer, and though he’s been cancer-free for four years, the ordeal left him unable to eat and turned his voice into a rasp. The new Top Gun doesn’t hide this. In fact, it finds an honorable, moving way to show what the actor has gone through off-screen. Now there’s word that Kilmer may return, in some fashion, for another ’80s revival.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, Disney+’s forthcoming Willow series, which revives the 1988 fantasy adventure, in which the beloved actor played swordsman Madmartigan, is trying to make room for the beloved actor to return. How? It’s not clear, especially given that Kilmer was not on-set during the series’ shoot.
“Val’s a huge part of this, and the first conversation I had, when Warwick and I got the green light to do this, was with Val,” said executive producer Lawrence Kasdan. “We wanted his character to be a part of the story. We wanted him to be in the show.” Kasdan didn’t elaborate, only saying Kilmer was “in the show in a big way” and that “Madmartigan lives on.”
With a story credited to no less than George Lucas, Willow followed Warwick Davis’ titular dwarf farmer, who lights out on a perilous journey involving a much-sought-after baby. Kilmer’s Madmartigan is the film’s Han Solo: a rogue who gradually becomes a good guy by siding with the more vulnerable heroes. The film underperformed at the time but over the decades has become a cult favorite, enough to prompt a revival featuring an older, grittier Willow.
Everyone, especially Tom Cruise, was stoked to get Kilmer back for Top Gun: Maverick, and it sounds like the Willow team feels the same way, however they wind up using him.
(Via THR)