Prince of Persia cast gets a bit more confusing

There was much scratching of heads when it was announced a couple of weeks ago that Jake Gyllenhaal is to be the titular prince in the upcoming film adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Gyllenhaal certainly isn't Persian, and for that matter, he's not a prince either. The situation kind of reminds me of something I saw once in some article on some website.

But that's all old news, so on to the new news: according to Variety, Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley have also been attached to the film. Alfred Molina will be playing the role of Sheik Amar, a mentor to the young Prince Dastan, and Kingsley has been rumored to be filling the role of the villainous vizier.
(News ends there).

If you haven't been keeping count, between Kingsley, Molina, Gyllenhaal and Gemma Aterton, who will be playing "Princess Tamina," the cast so far consists of an American, two Brits and Alfred Molina, who is of Spanish and Italian heritage, but was born in England. It seems to me that Prince of Persia might wind up suffering from 300 Syndrome, where all the actors are not only of the wrong ethnicity, but also have offensively inappropriate accents.

Let's just hope that, like 300, so much attention is paid to action, style and art direction that acting becomes inconsequential. With Jerry Bruckheimer producing, that isn't such a long shot.