When it comes to disaster movies, Roland Emmerich is generally your go-to director and now his upcoming project Moonfall is starting to take shape as Artemis Fowl and Frozen star Josh Gad has signed on to lead the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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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.
Gad is the first star of what is set to become an ensemble roster and has signed on to portray KC Houseman, a character described as “odd and unkempt in a way that suggests a high level of intelligence and an equally high level of disorganization” that “correctly predicts that the moon has fallen out of its orbit” making himself one of the most important people on Earth.
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 in November.
