Ruairi Robinson got a few headlines when, about a year ago, he debuted Blinky™, a science fiction short that featured the acting talents of Max Records (Where the Wild Things Are); past that, his career has been a little slower than some may prefer.. However, The Daily Mail (via ThePlaylist) reports that he’s wrangled a trio of players for a sci-fi feature, The Last Days on Mars, which will begin shooting in July.

Liev Schreiber, Sally Hawkins, and Romola Garai (One Day, Atonement) will be leading the film, written by Clive Dawson and based on a short story by Sydney J. Bounds. It follows eight astronauts on a Mars space station who encounter danger when they discover an unknown, dangerous bacteria; BleedingCool, having read the script, described it as something of a horror film, what with “a lot of business with airlocks that could be outstandingly tense if deftly handled.” (WETA doing the special effects should make a big difference.) Five more leads need to be picked out, though that’s not business we can get down to right now.

In the meantime, the casting we’ve already been supplied with is some encouraging stuff. Schreiber and Hawkins are established talents who don’t need to be praised even further; with some decent material under her belt, Garai isn’t exactly an untested commodity, either. Should Last Days on Mars also carry some of the visual skill on display in Blinky™ or his Cillian Murphy-led Silent City, we could have something special on the way.

Do you like what’s being set up for The Last Days on Mars?