While a bulk of the Hollywood film and television productions have been placed on hiatus during the writers/actors strikes, a handful of projects are getting some interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA allowing for them to move forward into filming. One of the those upcoming projects is a new sci-fi thriller, “The Astronaut,” hailing from writer/director Jess Varley and will begin shooting next month in Ireland.

Deadline is now reporting that Kate Mara (“The Martian”) is set to play the titular astronaut in the film, Sam Walker. She will appear in the project alongside fellow cast members Laurence Fishburne (“John Wick 4”) and Gabriel Luna (“The Last of Us”).

The outlet also provided a logline for the sci-fi film:

In the pic, astronaut Sam Walker (Mara) returns from her first space mission. She’s found miraculously alive in a punctured capsule floating deep off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Expecting to be reunited with her husband (Luna), she finds herself placed under intense NASA surveillance in a high security house for rehabilitation and medical testing under the control of General William Harris (Fishburne). However, when disturbing occurrences begin happening around the property, she fears that something extraterrestrial has followed her back to Earth.

The producing team assembled for “The Astronaut” consists of Fuller Media’s Brad Fuller (Paramount’s “A Quiet Place” and “A Quiet Place Part II,” Universal’s “The Purge” films) and Cameron Fuller, alongside Wonder Company’s Eric B. Fleischman (J.D. Dillard’s “Sleight”) and Chris Abernathy (“Barbarian”). Highland Film Group is handling the foreign rights to the movie at TIFF while CAA Media Finance and the UTA Independent Film Group are co-repping domestic rights.

SOURCE: DEADLINE