Aladdin’s Marwan Kenzari Up For Return of Jafar

Aladdin is expecting a sequel but the shape it will take remains unknown. One of the highlights of the live-action remake of the Disney classic for many was Marwan Kenzari‘s portrayal of Jafar. As the story goes, the animated Aladdin film found a sequel in the form of The Return of Jafar, ultimately the pilot of the animated series. The sequel takes place one year after the events of the first film as the lamp is found and Jafar is now under the control of Abis Mal while Aladdin and Abu are exploring new adventures. Should Disney decide to go this route, Kenzari would be delighted to reprise the role.

“I would be humbly grateful to do a second one,’ Kenzari told ComicBook.com in an interview seen in the video above. “It’s up to the big bosses and I’m all ready.”

As of February, a sequel to Aladdin was in the works at Disney. There has not been an update since the coronavirus pandemic put a temporary halt of all things filmmaking, though. There is no reason to believe the Aladdin sequel has been cancelled but its arrival in theaters might be later than originally planned.

“We have now [explored the idea for a sequel],” producer Dan Lin previously told ComicBook.com. “We certainly when we first made the movie wanted to just make the best movie we could and let audiences tell us if they wanted to see more. And I would say resoundingly audiences want to see more. They’ve watched this movie multiple times. We have lots of fan letters about people who really go back and they bring their friends and bring their family. And so we feel like there’s more story to tell. We are going to treat it the same way we treat the original Aladdin movie and not going to do a shot by shot remake of anything that’s been done before. We’re really looking at what’s been done before in the past and the home video, and there’s just more story to tell with the underlying materials. So without giving away too much, we are certainly exploring where we can go with this franchise.”

Would you like to see Kenzari reprise his role as Jafar? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

In the mean time, fans of Kenzari can see his work in The Old Guard, a comic book movie hitting Netflix on July 10.