Brad Pitt and James Gray (The Lost City Of Z, We Own The Night) are teaming up for sci-fi epic Ad Astra, and it looks like they’ve found the actor to play Pitt’s father.
Deadline reports that Tommy Lee Jones is in final negotiations to join the film, which is co-written and directed by Gray, and is described as “a futuristic sci-fi epic.”
Plot details are not over-abundant, but the site’s synopsis is as follows: “In Ad Astra (which means “to the stars” in Latin), Pitt would play the slightly autistic space engineer Roy McBride. Twenty years after his father left on a one-way mission to Neptune in order to find signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence, McBride travels through the solar system to find him and understand why his mission failed.”
They also note that there will be “a bit of Heart Of Darkness vibe, set in deep space.” Which we can definitely get on board with. The script was co-written by Fringe veteran Ethan Gross.
It sounds as though this film is getting moving quickly following World War Z 2‘s big shuffle along Pitt’s schedule. The zombie sequel will very likely be directed by David Fincher, but Paramount pulled it from their schedule while they figured out what they were going to do with it. Ad Astra is set to begin shooting in September.
Gray has become one of the most critically adored American filmmakers of the moment, with his Amazon exploration epic The Lost City Of Z getting rave reviews, as well as delivering films like The Yards and The Immigrant. Pitt was originally set to star in the former film before Charlie Hunnam took the lead role, although he still produced it under his Plan B banner.
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