One of the more mysterious titles of the fall film season, James Gray‘s sci-fi drama “Ad Astra,” has crash landed with a first look at the Brad Pitt-led star faring tale. The film captures a bit of a stoic, emotional glance into what Gray is cooking up with this one, the story of how a NASA engineer (Pitt) journeys across the solar system to discover his father’s (Tommy Lee Jones) whereabouts after the latter left 20 years prior to find alien life.
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Gray is coming off a homer with 2017’s adventurous, foreboding “The Lost City of Z,” with a Pitt-backed project set in space the grandest feat the director has attempted yet. With Pitt, Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Jamie Kennedy (!), LisaGay Hamilton, John Ortiz, John Finn and Kimberly Elise, Gray’s got a perfect cast for the original story he and screenwriter Ethan Gross (T.V.’s “Fringe“) have concocted.
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Oh, and it certainly helps to have heavyweight craft names like Thomas Newman (score) and Hoyte van Hoytema (cinematography) along for the ride. Seeing van Hoytema return to space after his awe-inspiring work on 2014’s “Interstellar” is quite a treat.
This one certainly has potential to be a major player in such an open year, with Gray having made some key contributions to film over the years and no doubt has his fans in the industry. It also helps to have Plan B’s Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner on board; they’ve navigated through this awards process more than once, including the Best Picture winning “Moonlight.” But how will the movie fare now that Fox have been purchased by Disney, and after its release date has shifted by over six months? and a studio like Fox who would love a bit of Oscar love before the big Disney sale goes through.
Fox, via Disney, will release “Ad Astra” on September 20th, which would seem to make it a dead cert for Venice, TIFF and/or Telluride. Watch the trailer below.