After a year of pre-production and a start date getting further and further delayed, we have word straight from the producer that Alfonso Cuarón will finally let the cameras roll in May. Producer David Heyman (who is also prepping Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2) sat down with Collider at CinemaCon and dug up some new details on the space thriller. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are locked for the roles after Robert Downey Jr., Angelina Jolie, Marion Cotillard, Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively and Natalie Portman were all involved at one point.
Clooney will play “the role of team leader of a space station.” Along with Bulllock, they “are the sole survivors when the space station is decimated by the debris field from an exploded asteroid. Bullock will carry much of the action adventure, a mother who is hellbent on returning to her young child back on earth.” Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men was my favorite film of the the past decade and I can’t wait to see this project come to fruition.
Heyman stated:
“We’re using technology that’s never seen before. This film will be more immersive, I believe, than anything you’ve seen before. You will really feel like you are in space. It will not be an objective view of space, it will be an immersive view of space. And you know as you say, with Children of Men, he loves these long shots. It’s gonna be a really bold, bold film.”
This goes along with earlier reports that Gravity may be made up of a number of extended takes, possibly all in a single shot. But could it all be in first person point of view? Heyman insistence on immersion seems to be hinting at something related.
We’ve heard plans of a single opening shot lasting twenty minutes, which seems more likely than an entire single shot. In the film, Russians blow up one of the many satellites in space and it causes a chain reaction of flying debris, exploding the shuttle our main characters occupy. Now, for the rest of the film, Bullock is in her life-suit and must jump from location to location to get air, in order to reach the mother boat haven of the International Space Station.
It was thought each of the jumps could take place in a single shot, but we’ll have to wait and see. Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer on Children of Men, as well as Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life and his upcoming untitled project, will be doing his work here and one can bet it will indeed be bold.
Gravity will hit theaters sometime in 2012.
Can you believe this project is finally gearing up? What do you think about the possible single takes?