What’s Next For the ‘Game of Thrones’ Cast

Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister)

Next seen in The Flood (in UK cinemas and on VOD June 21, 2019), and Gunpowder Milkshake (2020).

Lena Headey’s next starring roles are set to satisfy two camps: audiences who couldn’t get enough of Cersei’s vindictiveness, and those who wished her character had been served more opportunities to display her heart, rather than her heartlessness, over the last few seasons.

For the former, there’s the promise of a high-octane, female-centric action thriller in Gunpowder Milkshake, which revolves around a pair of mother-daughter assassins (to be played by Headey and Karen Gillan respectively). Plot details are thin on the ground, but the most up-to-date report on the project hints at some familial conflict between Headey and Gillan’s characters, which, if true, would situate Headey’s character within a dynamic we’re well-used to seeing her operate in.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s The Flood, a low-key affair that has been described as offering Headey the opportunity to be “very raw” and “emotionally accessible,” in marked contrast to her work on Thrones. Anthony Woodley’s drama follows the interplay between Headey’s Wendy, a UK government agent tasked with assessing the veracity of asylum cases, and Haile (Ivanno Jeremiah), an asylum applicant whose treacherous journey across seas and through the Calais Jungle risks being all for nothing, lest he convinces Wendy of his legitimacy. The Flood’s distributor calls it “a thoughtful and timely reflection on the humanity within the refugee crisis,” suggesting the film (which also stars Thrones‘ stalwart Iain Glen) will pair well with Headey’s advocacy work: in particular, her efforts to publicise the plight of refugees in Europe in partnership with the International Rescue Committee, which Thrones fans might be aware of via the actor’s Instagram.

Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) 

Next seen in Dark Phoenix (June 7, 2019).

Thanks to her increasingly central role in the political machinations of season eight, the Sansa Stark (and, concomitantly, Sophie Turner) fandom has seen its numbers grow exponentially – particularly so after her suspicions about Daenerys were vindicated in “The Bells.” Good news for those fans, then: Sophie Turner will take on even more of the spotlight in her next project, the much-delayed Dark Phoenix. Turner debuted the younger version of the telepathic and telekinetic Jean Grey as part of an ensemble in X-Men: Apocalypse, but here, she takes center stage in this reworking of the “Dark Phoenix” saga we last saw tackled in X-Men: The Last Stand.

As in later series of Thrones, Dark Phoenix will see Turner wrestle with complex emotional work. After a space rescue mission goes awry, Jean Grey is possessed by the unstable Phoenix force that pits her against her friends, prompting an intense internal struggle. As the movie’s final trailer suggests, there’s potential for a lot more angsty emotion here, as the remaining X-Men find themselves split on whether Jean remains redeemable or is entirely lost to the Phoenix. Even if her character survives those battles, it’s unclear whether Turner will be back in any of the inevitable future Disney-Marvel X-Men installments, given that Dark Phoenix is one of the last two X-Men movies to film under the 21^st Century Fox banner (Disney having acquired Fox in March 2019).

Maisie Williams (Arya Stark)

Next seen in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (2019), The New Mutants (April 3, 2020), and The Owners (release TBA).

As Thrones’ resident assassin extraordinaire, Maisie Williams has had to contend with some pretty horror-adjacent storylines, an experience that should set her up perfectly for her next couple of projects, both of which sound tonally in-keeping with Williams’ work on Thrones (plus one that doesn’t: a celebrity judge spot on the UK version of RuPaul’s Drag Race).

First, there’s Fox’s last ever X-Men installment, the horror flick The New Mutants, in which Williams will play one of five young mutants discovering the extent of their powers while being held prisoner in a secret asylum. Williams plays Scottish mutant Wolfsbane (or Rahne Sinclair), whose ability to turn herself into a wolf causes internal friction with her deeply held religious beliefs. Considering New Mutants is officially being billed as a horror, it will be interesting to see how Williams’ character reworks one of the genre’s classic character types – the werewolf – although, as with her onscreen sister’s X-Men movie, New Mutants has been subject to numerous delays, so who knows whether that April 2020 release date will stick.

It’s possible, then, that we’ll get to see Williams’ other project, The Owners, around the same time as (or even before) The New Mutants. The ‘90s-set thriller, which began shooting in May 2019, stars Williams as Mary, a 20-something woman who is reluctantly roped into robbing an isolated mansion in the English countryside by her boyfriend (Ian Kenny) and friend Terry (Andrew Ellis). In the French comic book on which The Owners is based, the young burglars wait for the elderly owners to return home, hoping to scare them into revealing the combination to a safe, but there proves to be more than meets the eye to the doctor who owns the house (to be played by Sylvester McCoy). Director Julius Berg has pulled off tense twists like that before (see Netflix’s French-language miniseries The Forest), boding well for this indie thriller.

Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran Stark)

Next seen in Voyagers (release TBA), and The Blue Mauritius (release TBA).

Ever since assuming the mantle of the Three-Eyed Raven, Bran Stark has come to be defined by one thing: his blank-eyed stare. Meme-worthy though that is, it’ll be refreshing to see Isaac Hempstead-Wright in some markedly more animated roles post-Thrones – which is exactly what his next two rumored projects seem to promise. Although not yet officially cast, reports in April 2019 had Hempstead-Wright attached to Divergent director Neil Burger’s space-set sci-fi Voyagers, presumably as one of the thirty kids who revert to wild, atavistic states after being sent to repopulate a new planet. The caliber of Hempstead-Wright’s would-be cast-mates is deeply encouraging: Colin Farrell, Fionn Whitehead, Tye Sheridan, and Lily-Rose Depp are all confirmed as part of the ensemble.

In between Voyagers and returning to university to complete a neuroscience degree, Hempstead-Wright will also have to find time to star alongside Anthony Mackie and Elodie Yung in globe-trotting heist thriller The Blue Mauritius. The movie, which could finally begin production this year after a few false starts, follows the attempts of five highly-trained thieves to break into a museum to steal a rare 19th-century stamp worth millions because of its considerable historical importance. It’s not clear where Hempstead-Wright’s character would come in – most of the principal roles are already filled – but with a busy university schedule likely lurking just ahead, a supporting turn sounds most plausible.

Related Topics: Alfie Allen, Anton Lesser, Carice van Houten, Conleth Hill, Dark Phoenix, Game of Thrones, Gemma Whelan, Gwendoline Christie, Hannah Murray, How to Build a Girl, Iain Glen, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Jacob Anderson, Jerome Flynn, Joe Dempsie, John Bradley, Jojo Rabbit, Kit Harington, Kristofer Hivju, Last Christmas, Lena Headey, Liam Cunningham, Nathalie Emmanuel, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Pilou Asbæk, Rory McCann, Sophie Turner, Tale of the Wet Dog, The New Mutants, The Owners, The Personal History of David Copperfield, X-Men

Farah Cheded is a Senior Contributor at Film School Rejects. Outside of FSR, she can be found having epiphanies about Martin Scorsese movies here and reviewing Columbo episodes here.