Laurence Fishburne will join Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in the upcoming sci-fi drama Passengers
Sony Pictures’ Passengers continues to move forward today as The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Academy Award nominee Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix trilogy) is in talks to join Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt and Michael Sheen in the sci-fi drama.
Scripted by Jon Spaihts, Passengers centers on Jim Preston (Pratt), a mechanic on a 120-year journey to a distant colonized planet in another galaxy, who becomes the first traveler to experience pod hibernation failure. Having woken up 100 years too soon, he is stranded in the world of an interstellar spaceship with only robots and androids for companionship. A year into his journey, he decides to wake up a fellow passenger, a beautiful journalist named Aurora (Lawrence). They fall in love but must soon deal not only with the revelation of Jim’s misjudged act of waking her but a major malfunction of the ship itself.
Sony bought the rights to Spaihts’ acclaimed screenplay last December after a number of other distributors tried developing it, including Dimension Films and Focus Features. Neal Moritz and Ori Marmur will produce the film through Moritz’s Original Film along with Michael Maher of Start Media and Stephen Hamel of Company Films.
In addition to starring as FBI Agent Jack Crawford on all three seasons of Bryan Fuller’s acclaimed Thomas Harris adaptation, “Hannibal,” Laurence has been appearing on ABC’s sitcom “black-ish.” He also has a home in the big screen DC Universe, having played “Daily Planet” Editor in Chief Perry White in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Laurence will be back in Metropolis for next year’s highly-anticipated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Laurence Fishburne’s role in Passengers has not yet been revealed and is somewhat of a mystery, given the story’s limited cast of characters. Sheen’s role, meanwhile, is said to be that of a robot.
Passengers will hit the big screen December 21, 2016.
(Photo credit: Guillermo Proano / WENN.com)
