There’s a lot of anticipation for James Gray‘s next movie Ad Astra, not only among the cinephiles that have appreciated the filmmaker’s previous filmography but also science fiction fans who are eager to see what the director of The Lost City of Z and crime films like We Own the Night might do in the genre.
20th Century Fox already released a trailer for the movie last month, but earlier today, Vanity Fair premiered a second trailer for Ad Astra, which I imagine will premiere at one of the big September festivals — Venice, Telluride or Toronto or maybe all three?
It stars Brad Pitt as Roy McBride, an astronaut who heads into space looking for his father Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) who has gone rogue. Pitt previously produced Gray’s Lost City of Z and the filmmaker and actor have been trying to get a project going together for quite a few years.
The new trailer gives us a much bigger idea of the scale of the movie, including some actual action scenes, so it’s definitely going to be quite a departure for Gray.
Although the movie was originally scheduled for Memorial Day weekend against Disney’s Aladdin, 20th Century Fox moved the release date to Sept. 20 after the studio’s well-publicized purchase by Disney went through. This better date actually positions the film closer to the October releases of Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, so maybe this is the first signs of Disney/Fox trying to position Gray’s film as an Oscar contender with Pitt in the leading actor category? I guess we’ll see.
You can watch the new trailer below and check out the new poster above (click on it for a larger version). You can also learn more about the project over at Vanity Fair.
