Four years ago, visionary director Alfonso Cuarón tore apart the International Space Station in spectacular fashion with Gravity, a film that would go on to collect scores of VFX awards for its eye-popping visuals – remember that 13-minute uncut tracking shot in the beginning?
How and ever, on March 24th, Daniel Espinosa’s Life will take the ISS and, rather than subject the audience to a barrage of cutting-edge CGI, engineer a nail-biting survival movie from within the stuffy confines of the man-made satellite. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds and Rebecca Ferguson, Espinosa’s intriguing thriller begins at a time when humanity is on the verge of making first contact with extraterrestrial life found on Mars.
What should go down in history as our greatest discovery soon devolves into a full-blown nightmare, as the organism turns out to be much more intelligent (and deadly!) than the ISS crew bargained for. Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool) are the brains behind the script, and if the combined box office pull of Gyllenhaal, Reynolds and Ferguson wasn’t enough, it’s now been confirmed that Life will close out SXSW 2017 on March 18th. Daniel Espinosa’s space oddity now joins a jam-packed docket comprised of Free Fire, The Disaster Artist and many more, and we understand Edgar Wright’s heist movie Baby Driver will kick the annual festival off with a bang on March 10th.
It’s official: Life will bring the curtain down on South by Southwest Film Festival 2017 on March 18th, at which point Espinosa’s space-set thriller will begin making the final preparations for its theatrical launch on March 24th. That’s a date it currently shares with Power Rangers, the budding Lionsgate franchise-starter directed by Dean Israelite.