Tom Cruise is a man who often has more than one project in the works at any one time, and along with having Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Rock of Ages both in the can, we’ve been hearing all about the recent casting for who will join Cruise on the upcoming adaptation of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel, One Shot.

We’ve now got the news courtesy of Variety via Collider that (soon-to-be Academy Award-nominee) Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life) is set to be joining Cruise as one of the two female leads for Horizons, one of which is Cruise’s wife and the other a mysterious traveller.

It’s not yet known which of the two leads Chastain will be taking, but after seeing her performance in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life this summer – which I sincerely believe she’ll be getting an Oscar nomination for early next year – I’m already looking forward to seeing her in this. Horizons, previously titled Oblivion, will see Cruise playing,

“a soldier stationed on a future Earth, the surface of which was destroyed by aliens. When he discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off a chain of events that cause him to question everything he knows.”

It’s not that often we get to see Cruise in a sci-fi film, with the last two being 2005’s War of the Worlds and 2002’s Minority Report, so having him lining up to take on another big-budget film like this definitely has me interested. And adding the likes of Chastain to star opposite him only furthers that interest.

The film is to be directed by Joseph Kosinski, who already some experience under his belt directing big-budget sci-fi films, despite having only one feature film to his name, having helmed last year’s Disney success, Tron: Legacy. Disney had originally picked up Horizons after the success of Tron: Legacy, but having since dropped it, it looks like Universal are now behind the film in their place, with an anticipated release date of 19th July, 2013 to look forward to, and production set to begin this winter.

The second female lead is yet to be cast, but it’s thought that one amongst the rest of the talented group of young female actresses who have tested with Cruise so far for the role has been chosen for the part, a group that includes the likes of Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy), Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Brit Marling (the upcoming Another Earth), and Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace).

Of these, Wilde is perhaps the one who has been gaining the most stock in the past year or so, starring in a slew of films like Tron: Legacy, The Next Three Days, Cowboys & Aliens, The Change-Up, and the upcoming In Time, and having already worked with Kosinski on Tron: Legacy, I’d love to see the pair working together again on this. With Chastain now entering talks, hopefully it won’t be long before we hear who has the other female lead, and which roles they’ll both be taking. More on this as we get it.