Things don’t always go according to plan, and had things gone as they should’ve, James Gray would’ve been gearing to shoot his long-developing movie “Ad Astra” (formerly known as “To The Stars“). However, the movie is still in the works, and it has a big star orbiting the lead role.
Deadline reports that with “World War Z 2” now on the back burner, Brad Pitt is eyeing Gray’s sci-fi movie, that was initially set up Paramount, but could be moving over to New Regency. While plot details had previously been revealed, the trade provided more info: Pitt would play a slightly autistic space engineer who embarks on a one-way trip to find out why his father’s previous mission to find signs of intelligent life failed.
The pairing isn’t surprising. Pitt and Gray have a strong relationship that dates back many years. Pitt was supposed to star in Gray’s assassin movie “The Gray Man,” and “The Lost City Of Z” — it was Pitt who brought the book to Gray in the first place with an eye on starring for his production shingle Plan B. “I’ve long sort of danced around things that [Pitt] was going to do and he was dancing around things that I was going to make but it’s never come to pass for one reason or another,” he told us in 2014.
As for “Ad Astra?” If you’re a hardcore sci-fi geek who thinks this doesn’t bring anything new to the table, Gray has promised he’s going to make something special. “Audiences have seen everything, there’s nothing that’s going to be ‘awe-inspiring.’ What happens really is that you have to come up with something conceptually amazing, not visually amazing. And that’s a challenge,” he explained in 2014. “It’s a challenge and I don’t want to make the film unless I think I’ve gotten it right.”
If everything falls into place, and a budget can get hammered out, production will begin this summer.