Lionsgate has successfully acquired the North American theatrical distribution rights to director Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming epic titled Moonfall, which will be his latest sci-fi action film since directing 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence. Production is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2020 with the studio planning to release the film in 2021.
“Roland Emmerich is the undisputed master of spectacular high-concept epics, and the premise and promise of ‘Moonfall’ is the kind of action tent pole that will be event movie-going in 2021,” Lionsgate’s president of acquisitions and co-productions, Jason Constantine said in a statement. “This is the kind of visual theatrical entertainment that Roland does better than anyone and we are thrilled to partner with him yet again.”
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In Moonfall, a mysterious force that knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact, and against all odds, a ragtag team launches an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love and risking everything to land on the lunar surface and save our planet from annihilation.
The film is written by Emmerich along with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. It has been likened as a combination of 2012 and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, following “an unlikely band of misfits who must unite to save humanity when the moon falls out of orbit and hurtles towards earth.”
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Emmerich will also be serving as a producer through his Centropolis banner. While Kloser is set to producer through his Street Entertainment company.
Coming off from the surprise success of Midway, this new project will mark the second collaboration between Emmerich and Lionsgate. The Independence Day director has been attached to helm Moonfall since 2016 but had to put the film’s production on hold for Midway, which had its premiere earlier this month.
(Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic via Getty Images)
