Kingdom Hearts II Cast, Release Official

Square Enix and Disney announced in a joint statement that the sequel to their wildly successful Final Fantasy-Disney mashup action title, Kingdom Hearts II, would hit store shelves on March 28, 2006 in North America. The all-star ensemble voice cast is led by Haley Joel Osment (“The Sixth Sense,” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”) as the main character Sora and is joined by David Gallagher (“7th Heaven”) as Riku, and Hayden Panettiere (“Racing Stripes,” “Raising Helen”) as Kairi. Kingdom Hearts II will also feature the voice talents of Jesse McCartney (“Summerland,” Recording artist, “Beautiful Soul” CD) as the mysterious boy Roxas, Brittany Snow (“The Pacifier,” “American Dreams”) as Namine, Christopher Lee (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring”) as DiZ; Steve Burton (“The Last Castle,” “Taken”) as Cloud, Rachael Leigh Cook (“She’s All That,” “Josie And The Pussycats”) as Tifa and Mena Suvari (“American Beauty,” “Rumor Has It”) as Aerith, all characters from Final Fantasy XII; and Hedy Buress (“Boston Common,” “If These Walls Could Talk”), Tara Strong (“Fairly OddParents : Shadow Showdown,” “Teen Titans”) , Gwendoline Yeo (“Desperate Housewives,” “24”) as the popular female-trio Yuna, Rikku, Paine from Final Fantasy X-2. In addition, many of the original Disney film star voice actors are reprising their role for this project, including Ming-Na (“ER,” “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within”) as Mulan, James Woods (“Be Cool”), returning as the villain Hades and Zach Braff (“Scrubs”) as Chicken Little. The original title was one of the most successful PlayStation 2 titles of all time. The cast of 100+ characters includes the pop-culture favorite Captain Jack Sparrow, from the Pirates of the Caribbean. The list released by Disney made no mention of Johnny Depp™s voice acting being included in the title – which either indicates that his inclusion will be a surprise to players (or not, since you™re reading this here on GN before you play the game, you fool), or that Depp did not participate in the dialogue recording for the game. Also missing from the list is Matt McKenzie, whose Final Fantasy X character, Auron, is included as a character in Kingdom Hearts II. Look to GamerNode for more updates on this promising title.