Keanu Reeves cast in new Sci-Fi Film called PASSENGERS
Morgan Creek has announced that they have cast Keanu Reeves as the lead in a new sc-fi film to be directed by Italian auteur Gabriele Muccino (Seven Pounds). The studio is currently out looking for his female co-star.
The new film is being described as Adam and Eve in space love with sophisticated robotics, a crusty older Tommy Lee Jones type character and a comic humanoid servant much like Eddie Izzard. These other roles haven't been cast yet. Apparently this pitch was good enough to set a $90 million dollar budget on the film!
The original script for the movie was written by Jon Spaihts who hasen't done much else, and it's currently being polished up a bit. Here is the more detailed description of the story from THR which actually does sound interesting.
Set in the future, Passengers centers on Jim Preston (Reeves), a mechanic on a 120-year journey to a distant colonized planet in another galaxy, who becomes the first traveler to experience pod hibernation failure. Having woken up 100 years too soon, he is stranded in the world of an interstellar spaceship with only robots and androids for companionship.
A year into his journey, he decides to wake up a fellow passenger, a beautiful journalist named Aurora. They fall in love but must soon deal not only with the revelation of Jim's misjudged act of waking her but a major malfunction of the ship itself.
Doesn't this story seem like a perfect match for Reeves? It's totally the kind of movie he would star in! We don't even know much about the main character, but just reading about what the setting of the film will be like proves that this is a perfect match. It sounds like a film that will have to rely heavily on story. It sounds like it has the setting of a smaller sci-fi film like Moon or Gattaca, so what's up with the $90 million dollar budget? I guess there's a little bit more to it. Unless most of the money is going to the actors.
Morgan Creek founder James Robinson also had this to add,
I think of the picture as having the after-taste of 'Titanic' -- but everyone lives.
So what do you all think about this new Keanu Reeves movie?