It seems that after casting him into the wilderness for several years, the film world is starting to remember who Jean Claude Van Damme is. Last week it was announced he and Dolph Lundgren were returning to theatres with a new 3D Universal Soldier movie, and now he’s been given the highest accolcade Hollywood can bestow, a role in a CG animated movie.
Dreamworks Animation has announced Van Damme is a new addition to the cast of Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom Of Doom, while Michelle Yeoh and Victor Garber will also lend their voices as new characters for the sequel. The movie sees Po going off on a personal journey to search for other pandas, but he has a run-in with a group of bandits along the way.
We don’t know too much about how the characters the newcomers will voice will fit into all this, although Yeoh will be a mystical character called The Soothsayer (who is a goat), while Van Damme and Garber will be Master Croc and Master Thundering Rhino respectively. They join Gary Oldman, who was announced as a new member last week, and will play a peacock called Lord Chen, the film’s formidable new villain.
All the old crew, including Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Susting Hoffman, Seth Rogen and Lucy Liu also return, with the movie due on UK cinemas on June 24th, 2011.