With production gearing up for a September start on the Brad Pitt-led Ad Astra, final talks with Tommy Lee Jones are heating up to get him to join the cast on the futuristic sci-fi epic.
Written and directed by We Own the Night and The Lost City of Z’s James Gray, information surrounding the plotline is being kept top secret, however, it has been reported that 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.
Going on that premise, we can assume that Tommy Lee Jones could very well be playing his Father, in a story which will be set in Deep space. Ethan Gross has co-written the script alongside Gray which is being sold as to having a Heart of Darkness-in-space vibe.
The team of James Gray and Brad Pitt have worked well together before; Pitt was initially down to star in The Lost City of Z before stepping into the producer’s chair and was also attached to Gray’s The Gray Man at one stage. Pitt is also currently still trying to get the sequel to World War Z made alongside the Fight Club director David Fincher but after Paramount pulled the film from their schedule Pitt has a little more time on his hands to concentrate on the deep space drama.
RT Features financed development. Plan B is producing with Gray, RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira, Keep Your Head Productions. Anthony Katagas and Mad River’s Marc Butan. RT Features’ Lourenco Sant’Anna and Sophie Mas are exec producing.
