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| By Christopher M |
Variety reports that Sony is currently in negotiations with Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum to helm their sci-fi flick Passengers. He’s best known for the Oscar nominated film which earned him a Best Director nomination, studios will likely be knocking his door with many projects.
Another one of his films is a slick thriller Headhunters which is totally worth watching if you get the chance.
Passengers is based on a spec-script from screenwriter Jon Spahits that Sony bought on the spot.
Set on a spacecraft in the future with thousands of passengers making an interstellar voyage to a distant new planet. One passenger awakens from cryogenic sleep 90 years before anyone else and decides to wake up a female passenger, sparking the beginning of a love story.
Jon is best known for having his original Prometheus script rewritten by Damon Lindelof, I urge you to seek out his original draft and compare it to the film it’s actually pretty damn good.
This new project is seeming taking cues from David’s creepy spying on Shaw during her hyper-sleep.
He’s also landed high profile screenwriting gigs with Marvel Studios penning Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange along with writing a draft of Universal’s Mummy reboot.
Casting hasn’t begun but a couple of names have been attached to the project in the past and they include Reese Witherspoon (Wild, Inherent Vice), Keanu Reeves (John Wick, Speed, Point Break) and Rachel McAdams (True Detective, Notebook). The actors have since moved on from the film but could be lured to return with Morten Tyldum’s involvement.
The genre is hot again thanks to films like Gravity and Guardians of The Galaxy making huge box office.
I’m sure he’ll be getting a bunch of offers but Sony has managed to allow some creative freedom to their sci-fi directors in the past with Neill Blomkamp being able to make wildly different movies like Elysium and the upcoming Chappie.
Other big sci-fi projects with sprawling casts coming soon include Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise.
