Ridley Scott is set to start shooting the film next month, and the casting announcements for his latest, sci-fi pic The Martian, are arriving at speed. The latest name to join the impressive ensemble are 12 Years A Slave**’s Chiwetel Ejiofor plus Captain America: The Winter Soldier's Sebastian Stan and actress Mackenzie Davis.
Matt Damon is starring in the film as NASA astronaut Mark Watney, left stranded on Mars after his crewmates on the Ares 3 mission are forced to evacuate by a dust storm.
To stave off death on the Red Planet, Watney tries to rustle up water and grow crops. Meanwhile, his fellow astronauts are kept in the dark about his survival during their voyage back to Earth on the Hermes spacecraft. NASA struggles to find some way to rescue Watney, while the Hermes astronauts add their efforts once they finally discover he’s alive. Jeff Daniels will play the NASA boss who must decide how much to tell Watney’s colleagues about his dire straits, while Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara and Michael Peña are all now listed as aboard the film, with Sean Bean recruited a couple of days ago.
According to EW, Stan and Davis' roles aren't known, but Ejiofor is on board as Venkat Kapoor, the director of the Mars mission who will no doubt be scrambling like his colleagues to find a way to save Watney’s stranded spaceman. **The ****Martian **reunites Ejiofor with his American Gangster director, and Scott’s working from a script by Drew Goddard, itself courtesy of Andy Weir’s book.
Ejiofor has worked on John Hillcoat’s Triple Nine and post-apocalyptic drama** Z For Zacharia****h**. He’s attached to the remake of The Secret In Their Eyes and has been rumoured for a role in the next Bond film.