It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve had a sweeping, multi-character epic in cinemas, so it’s welcome news that Oscar Isaac has been confirmed as leading the cast of Life Itself – an upcoming film from writer-director Dan Fogelman. FilmNation nabbed the spec script during the summer, and quickly committed to finance and produce the project, along with Temple Hill – all of which bodes very well for the quality of the story.
Oscar Isaac will take centre stage among an ensemble of distinctive characters, in a tale that spans a number of generations, several continents, and many years. While details are scarce on how these characters will connect – and specifically how they will connect with Oscar Isaac – it’s clear that love will feature heavily throughout their various life-intersections. This is exciting news for Isaac, who has thus far kept his leading roles to much smaller, more intimate movies, such as Ex Machina. He reached a much bigger audience recently though with both 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and X-Men: Apocalypse earlier this year – both of which will undoubtedly bring a bigger audience to Life Itself, as a result.
This will be the second time in the director’s chair for Dan Fogelman, who made his helming debut in 2015 with Danny Collins, which starred Al Pacino and Annette Bening. As a writer, Fogelman has proven himself to have a successful touch – with Cars, Bolt, Tangled, and Crazy, Stupid, Love featuring on his resume. He also created and wrote the TV series Pitch, Galavant, and This Is Us – demonstrating the broad range of talent he brings to his work.
Life Itself is reportedly set to begin production in the spring, so it will be interesting to see whether it makes it to theatres in time for the 2017 awards season. In the meantime, we’ll be watching closely to see who will be joining Oscar Isaac in this ensemble cast, and just what the scope of this sweeping epic is going to be.