While we wait to find out if there will ever be a standalone Boba Fett movie, the beloved bounty hunter will return to the Star Wars universe in audiobook form, played by Jon “Hamm Solo” Hamm. The Marjorie Prime star is one of ten narrators for Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, the new anthology containing 40 stories of background characters for the 40th anniversary of A New Hope.
Hamm will read Batman: The Animated Series writer Paul Dini’s short story “Added Muscle.” Judging from the line below, the story might concern Fett joining up with Jabba the Hutt:
Hamm is a curious choice; already the announcement has earned some Don Draper jokes. But he’s been experimenting with genre stories in the last few years, playing a hologram in Marjorie Prime and showing up on the Black Mirror Christmas special.
StarWars.com posted the complete cast list:
- Jonathan Davis
- Ashley Eckstein
- Janina Gavankar
- Jon Hamm
- Neil Patrick Harris
- January LaVoy
- Saskia Maarleveld
- Carol Monda
- Daniel José Older
- Marc Thompson
According to the attached interview with producers Aaron Blank and Nick Martortelli, Harris will be reading as an Imperial officer on the Death Star; Maarleveld will reprise her role as Leia’s adoptive mother from Claudia Gray’s Leia, Princess of Alderaan; and Eckstein, who most recently voiced Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: Forces of Destiny, will also voice Miara Larte in the story she co-wrote with E.K. Johnston.
Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View will be available in hardcover, ebook, and unabridged audiobook on October 3.
Now there’s a puzzling choice. I’m not familiar with Hamm’s voiceover work (only his Don Draper work). As far as his own natural voice goes, he’s as distant as its gets from either Jason Wingreen or Temuera Morrison.
@1/Eduardo: In general, audiobook narrators aren’t expected to sound that much like the characters they’re reading for, since usually a single narrator does every character in the story. It’s more an interpretation than something meant to be taken literally. (The exception being GraphicAudio, which does fully dramatized audiobooks that are more like radio plays.)
When I first read the title, for about two seconds my mind went Hamm > John Ratzenberger and I was left scratching my head a bit, ha.
Although of course as it turns out, John Ratzenberger HAS already played a role in Star Wars ;)
All that said, I love these kinds of anthologies. My first foray into the old Star Wars EU was “Tales from Jabba’s Palace” and I ended up reading all the different ‘Tales’ anthologies :) I was delighted that the object of my newfound obsession had such a detailed universe to disappear into, such that even the rabble in the cantina get a name and a story :)
All Mr. Hamm has to do is smoke a carton of Luckies to sound like Jason Wingreen.
@2/Christopher: I had no idea. Truth be told, I’ve never listened to an audiobook in my life.
And of course, Temuera Morrison sounded nothing like the original Boba voice actor, to the point that they redubbed his voice for the post-prequel special editions. Then there are all the different voices Palpatine has had in canonical productions — Clive Revill, Ian McDiarmid, Ian Abercrombie, Tim Curry, Sam Witwer.
And while most of the voices in the old NPR radio drama adaptations of the films at least tried to sound more or less in the same ballpark as the movie actors, I never thought Brock Peters sounded anything like James Earl Jones.