After the Red Wedding, Richard Madden is looking to become eternal.
Variety is reporting that Richard Madden is in talks to join Chloé Zhao's upcoming film The Eternals, based on the classic Marvel comic series created by Jack Kirby. Madden will be playing Ikaris in the film, which also stars Angelina Jolie and Kumail Nanjiani.
The Eternals are a fictional species of humanity that resulted from an offshoot of the evolutionary process that created sentient life on Earth. The original instigators of this process, the alien Celestials, intended the Eternals to be the defenders of Earth, which leads to the inevitability of war against their destructive counterparts, the Deviants.
Madden, 32, is a Scottish actor best known as Robb Stark in the HBO series Game of Thrones. His films include Rocketman, Bastille Day, and Cinderella (2015), while his other television work includes episodes of Bodyguard, Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, Klondike, and Birdsong.
Ikaris chose his name due to a tragic accident hundreds of years ago. While fighting the Deviants in ancient Greece, the man eventually known as Ikaris met and married a human woman. Together, they bore a son named Icarus, who loved to soar with his father high above the seas and mountains of Greece. In time, the Eternal built his son a set of mechanical wings so the boy could fly on his own. When his father disappeared while fighting the Deviants, the young Icarus sought him out using the mechanical wings. Too inexperienced to fly on his own, young Icarus soared too high, losing consciousness in the upper atmosphere, and fell to his death. Finding his son dead, the Eternal took the name of his son, Ikaris, in his memory.
When the Celestials arrived on Earth in the 20th century, Ikaris witnessed the arrival of the Fourth Celestial Host on Earth and then publicly revealed himself, as the other Eternals did. During his long lifetime, Ikaris attempted to be a fair and just leader of the Eternals, but abandoned Eternal traditions to take an active and public role in protecting the human race. The Eternals helped a number of Earth's heroes, particularly the Avengers, against several menaces.
Years later, The Eternals were the victims of memory and reality manipulation by former Eternal Sprite, and forgot their true identities. Although Ikaris (calling himself Ike Harris) was captured and atomized by the Deviants Gelt and Morjak, his body reappeared at the bottom of the Antarctic city of Olympia. With his body and powers fully restored by the sentient city, Ikaris regained his memories and set out to awaken his fellow Eternals to their true identities. After a prolonged battle, he at last united the few Eternals present, then planned to team up with Makkari and reawaken the ninety other Eternals.