CREED's Tessa Thompson May Join Alex Garland's Sci-Fi Film ANNIHILATION
I first noticed actress Tessa Thompson in a supporting role on Veronica Mars, and for the past ten years, she's been steadily working on a bunch of television shows and small movies. But she had a very big 2014, starring in two acclaimed movies — Dear White People and Selma — and she made a mark in 2015 as well, starring as the female lead in Creed. She elevated that character beyond a traditional girlfriend role, imbuing her with a life and passions of her own beyond just hanging out alongside Michael B. Jordan's character.
It looks like all of her hard work is paying off, because Hollywood is starting to take notice. The Wrap reports that Thompson is in early talks to appear opposite Natalie Portman and Gina Rodriguez in Alex Garland's new sci-fi movie Annihilation.
Based on Jeff VanderMeer's novel, Annihilation centers on four women on a dangerous expedition to an area where the laws of nature no longer apply. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers―they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding―but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
Garland wrote the screenplays for 28 Days Later..., Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Dredd, and he made his directorial debut with last year's excellent sci-fi feature Ex Machina (which he also wrote). I loved Ex Machina (it was one of my favorite movies of 2015), so naturally I'm very excited to see how Annihilation turns out, and I'm stoked about this cast of talented women who are going to bring it to life.
In the meantime, Thompson is slated to appear in HBO's highly-anticipated new show Westworld, which has the potential of being one of the best things to hit the small screen this year.