Ridley Scott is in talks to direct Matt Damon in The Martian, a sci-fi film at Fox centering on an astronaut who is stranded on a Martian colony and struggles to survive. Back on Earth, NASA tries to mount a rescue mission. Drew Goddard was previously attached but his Sinister Six commitments prevent him from making the film. Martian is based on Andy Weir‘s self-published book, find it here. [THR]
Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines) is set to direct Michael Fassbender in Dreamworks’ The Light Between Oceans. The film is based on M.L. Stedman’s novel, set on a remote Australian island in the years following World War I, story follows a lighthouse keeper and his wife who are faced with a moral dilemma when a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a two-month-old infant. When they decide to raise the child as their own, the consequences of their choice are devastating. Fassbender will shoot this film before beginning work on Prometheus 2. [The Wrap]
Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller join Tom Hiddleston in director Ben Wheatley‘s High-Rise. Irons will play a visionary architect alongside Miller as his devoted aide who strikes up a relationship with Hiddleston’s character Robert Laing. The film is based on the novel by JG Ballard. Production is due to get underway in July in Belfast, Northern Ireland. [Screen Daily]
UPDATE: An update on the story below has appeared in The Guardian as Bendjelloul’s brother, Johar Bendjelloul, told the Aftonbladet newspaper in Sweden his brother took his own life. “I can confim that it was suicide and that he had been depressed for a short period of time,” he said, adding, “Life is not always so easy… I don’t know how to handle it.” Originally story follows…
Finally, in a bit of very unexpected and suspicious bit of news Searching for Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul was found dead at the age of 36 in Stockholm. No cause of death, but local police told the newspaper Expressen that it was not being treated as suspicious. Hmmm, no cause of death and no foul play and he was only 36? There is clearly more to this story whether it’s simply drug use or something else entirely. [Deadline]
