Kate Mara Tapped For Sci-Fi Thriller ‘The Astronaut’ With Filming To Begin Next Month In Ireland

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

Gabriel Luna To Play Joel’s Brother Tommy In ‘The Last of Us’ Series

Production on HBO’s live-action series adaptation of the video game The Last of Us will begin this July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They’ve added another cast member as Gabriel Luna has been hired to play the younger brother of lead character Joel, Tommy. The news coming to us via Deadline.

Based on the critically acclaimed video game The Last of Us, the story takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

Luna is likely best known for his roles in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Terminator: Dark Fate, and briefly appearing in Season 2 of HBO’s True Detective.

Lead actor Pedro Pascal is also attached to Star Wars series The Mandalorian Season 3 which hasn’t officially started filming as Obi-Wan Kenobi is going to be the next Disney+ show to shoot at the California facility starting this month. Their is a new rumor making the rounds that Pascal’s Din Djarin will be appearing in The Book of Boba Fett.

There is a possibility that Pedro will shoot The Last of Us over the summer and might jump into The Mandalorian Season 3 later in the year when Alberta gets too cold to shoot outdoors.

Kantemir Balagov is directing the pilot.

SOURCE: DEADLINE