The second season of Guillermo del Toro’s animated comedy DreamWorks Trollhunters has added Mark Hamill, Lena Headey and David Bradley to its cast, alongside returning stars Kelsey Grammer (in his Emmy-winning role as Blinky), Ron Perlman, Steven Yeun, Anjelica Huston, Jonathan Hyde, Amy Landecker and Charlie Saxton.
Anton Yelchin led the first season as Jim Lake, a reluctant teenage hero forced to protect the world from the evil Gumm-Gumms trolls from the Darklands, and completed recording season two of the Netflix Original series before his death in 2016. The first two episodes of the show, released worldwide on 23 December last year, were dedicated to his memory.
Hamill, known for his roles as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars series and for voicing the Joker in DC Comics’s Batman animations, will voice the unknown older brother to a member of the Trollhunting team but has pledged his loyalty to the evil Gunmar.
Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister in HBO’s epic fantasy series) plays an extremely powerful and evil sorceress who must be stopped at all costs, whilst her Game of Thrones co-star David Bradley (Argus Filch in Harry Potter) voices a mysterious figure known to have great magical powers.
In 2013, Netflix signed an exclusive deal with DreamWorks for over 300 hours of original content. Shows so far have also included Turbo FAST, The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, and three seasons of the rebooted 80’s cartoon Voltron: Legendary Defender, with a fourth season due to air next month.
DreamWorks Trollhunters was the first Netflix original to debut with 26 episodes, each around 20 minutes in length. Season two, premiering later this year, will be considerably shorter with 13 episodes commissioned and picks up with Jim entering the Darklands by himself, leaving his best friends and fellow Trollhunters, Toby and Claire, behind.
DreamWorks Trollhunters recently won six Creative Arts Daytime Emmys, more than any other program, including writing for an animated program (Marc Guggenheim), directing (Rodrigo Blaas, del Toro), casting (Ania O’Hare, Mary Hildalgo) and a voice acting win for Grammer.