Following word that David Oyelowo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw will get into the Bad Robot business with God Particle, a new casting update has made this project all the more promising. Variety has word that the J.J. Abrams-produced title is looking to add John Krasinski, who would play the member of “a team of astronauts who make a terrifying discovery that challenges everything they know about the fabric of reality, as they desperately fight for survival.”
Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street) and Doug Jung (Star Trek Beyond) have scripted God Particle, with Julius Onah (The Girl Is in Trouble) directing for a release on February 24, 2017.
Other casting news, also from Variety: reprising roles that earned them Tony’s, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis will lead a film adaptation of the Broadway play Fences. Washington will direct a script from playwright August Wilson, the pair presumably maintaining the original story of a former baseball player, now a garbageman in Pittsburgh, and the “complicated relationships with his wife, son, and friends.”
Mykelti Williamson, Stephen Henderson, Saniyya Sydney, Jovan Adepo, and Russell Hornsby are co-starring. Paramount are backing the project, and shooting begins this month.
The last and most intriguing bit of news concerns Annie Clark, who’s known in most corners as St. Vincent. The musician — who can soon be seen performing in the Ross brothers’ very fine documentary Contemporary Color — has announced she’ll make her writing-directing debut with XX, a female-directed, female-led anthology horror film also helmed by Karyn Kusama, Jennifer Lynch, and Jovanka Vuckovic.
Like many of her fans, I’m deeply curious what Clark, both extremely talented in her own right and a newcomer on this front, might bring. That’s as uncertain as it is intriguing, especially given her noted affection for films with a horror slant — in particular what she perceives to be horror cinema — and the eerie qualities that mark a few of her music videos. The history of musicians jumping to directing isn’t exactly the most consistent, which should be all the more reason to hope XX leaves a mark.
See the poster below:
