Tom Cruise Signs For Joseph Kosinski’s ‘Oblivion’ At Universal
Joseph Kosinski’s post-Tron Legacyproject,Oblivion, is now a ‘go’ picture. Months after Disneyput the movie into turnaround, a PG-13 version ofOblivionnow hasTom Cruisesigned to take the lead role, “a soldier who’s stuck alone on the planet, repairing the drones that patrol and destroy a savage alien life form. He encounters a beautiful woman who crashes in a craft, and their experience together forces him to question his world view.”
Universal will now make the film, which has had Cruiserumoredto star, and is starting to look like the replacement for Guillermo Del Toro’sAt the Mountains of Madness, for which Cruise was also the lead candidate to star. But this is a slightly less expensive film thanMountainswas turning into;Oblivionwill be made for a relatively paltry $100m. As far as we know the project is still working fromKarl Gajdusek’s rewrite ofWilliam Monahan’s script, which in turn was based on the original story hatched by Joseph Kosinski and Arvid Nelson.
We’ve been following the project for some time, since it was announced as a graphic novel (created essentially as proof of concept for the film) and Disney’s subsequent pickup of the project. The graphic novel isn’t actually out yet — it’ll be published later this year. The film will shoot this fall, and it looks like this means that Tom Cruise won’t be part ofPacific Rim, the GdT project that came to life afterAt the Mountains of Madnessdied.
Here’s the synopsis of the GN:
From Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski and critically acclaimed creator Arvid Nelson (Rex Mundi) comes an original sci-fi adventure of epic proportions. In a future where the Earth’s surface has been irradiated beyond recognition, the remnants of humanity live above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins. But when surface drone repairman Jak discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off an unstoppable chain of events that will force him to question everything he knows.
