The cast for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is already very good, with Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron already signed on. Three additions have just been made to the cast, and it’s only increased its strength.

TheDailyMail (via ThePlaylist) tells us that those three additions happen to be Idris Elba, Sean Harris and Kate Dickie. The first you should (really, really should) know from his work as Stringer Bell on The Wire; the second has had small roles in movies such as Harry Brown and Red Riding 1980; the final new cast member was seen in Andrea Arnold’s debut film Red Road, as well as having a role on the miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, produced by both Scott brothers.

Their casting, to me, shows that actors are actually going to matter here, something I feel is missing from so many big-budget blockbusters these days. Ridley’s career has shown he takes casting seriously, as he even got someone as legendary as Max von Sydow for a small role in Robin Hood. And, I mean…Stringer Bell going against a xenomorph. How does that not get you excited?

On an appropriate note, a story from BleedingCool (via /Film) has uncovered how we might be seeing the classic monsters in the upcoming is-it-a-prequel-or-not. The information gives insight into not just how they’ll look in the movie, but how they could factor into the story.

On how it might appear:

Remember how the alien took on canine qualities after gestating in a dog? You may even suppose that the first film’s alien was so recognisably humanoid because it had grown in a human. The same applies here: generation by generation, the creature mutates. As Prometheus begins, the xenomorph is not too recognisable. Sure, it has that alien DNA that Scott and Fassbender teasingly referred to, but it’s missing… well, it’s missing human DNA. Or dog DNA.

I like the idea of them not exactly being what we’ve always seen; if done right, it could serve to distance this from the original series, as the appearance of the creatures are certainly one of the more distinctive things about it.

On where they come from:

I learned that the film’s setting is, in part, a planet that has been terraformed to create the perfect environment in which a particular bioweapon would prosper. Terraformed deliberately to farm the weapon? I got no clear answer. Is this bioweapon the alien? I got no clear answer.

Ridley Scott himself has theorized that the Space Jockey’s ship was used to drop the alien eggs on a planet as a way of conquering the planet’s citizens, and planned this for the prequel; the idea for this movie sounds awfully similar, at least to me. Considering that we might see this same creature in the upcoming movie, the pieces seem to fall together, and the speculation from this source also becomes more and more plausible. I’m still disappointed that this is looking more and more like a prequel to the first movie, but at least some of the concepts behind it are unique, and, like I said, it could feel different from what we’ve seen before.

What do you think of these new cast members? Do you think that these rumors could have truth to them, and is the movie looking more and more promising?