Casting for Morten Tyldum’s tragic sci-fi romance Passengers is heating up today, after The Hollywood Reporter learned that Aurora Perrineau has joined the ensemble.
Best known for roles in the disastrous Jem and the Holograms movie and, soon, the Kristen Stewart-fronted dystopian love story Equals, Perrineau will star opposite Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen and Laurence Fishburne in Sony’s futuristic tale.
Based on a script produced by Prometheus scribe Jon Spaihts, Passengers revolves around a space vessel travelling to a distant new planet. Hunkering down for the long journey, its thousand-strong crew are placed in cryogenic sleep to negate the affects of the long haul – and time itself – though when one sleep pod malfunctions, Chris Pratt’s character is crudely woken up 90 years ahead of schedule, leading him to wake up another passenger: Jennifer Lawrence.
Brash, stupid and selfish, Pratt and Lawrence are left in the company of the ship’s AI (voiced by Michael Sheen), before desperately searching for a way to prevent the onset of old age as the vessel inches closer and closer to the final destination.
Originally pitched for Keanu Reeves and, at one stage, Rachel McAdams to take on the core roles, Passengers has undergone a creative overhaul during development. Not that you would you have guessed, considering that Sony’s big-budget sci-fi has fast become one of the more anticipated releases of late 2016.
Passengers will dock in theaters on December 21, 2016. That’s a crowded corridor for sci-fi features, too, considering that Tyldum’s feature is sandwiched between Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Justin Kurzel’s long-awaited Assassin’s Creed film. Even still, with Pratt and Lawrence driving the space-bound adventure, we have no doubt it’ll carve out an audience of its own.