It has been three years since director James Gray first announced that he would be making a sci-fi epic called AD ASTRA, but to tell the truth I haven't been paying much attention to the project, not even as Gray assembled a cast that includes Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tyler, Ruth Negga, John Ortiz, Donald Sutherland, and Jamie Kennedy. But now a trailer for AD ASTRA has arrived online, and this film has my attention.
Gray, who also wrote the screenplay with Ethan Gross, has compared the story to Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, which instantly captures my imagination because that novel served as the basis for the great APOCALYPSE NOW. In this sci-fi twist on the concept, Pitt plays
astronaut Roy McBride, who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.
The trailer can be seen below and contains some great visuals, including the sight of explosions in space, an astronaut falling through space, and some kind of vehicular chase shootout on the moon, or a place that looks like the moon.
AD ASTRA is scheduled to reach theatres on September 20th. RAMBO: LAST BLOOD is still my most highly anticipated movie coming out on that date, but this one looks pretty cool, too.