Though Matt Damon will be spending a lot of time alone on Mars for Ridley Scott’s next planned movie, sci-fi drama The Martian, there are other people in the story.And if their talks work out, Jessica Chastain and Kristen Wiig could be filling two of those roles.
Variety broke the news of Chastain circling the film, while Deadline delivered word of Wiig’s potential involvement. The Martian, which is taken from Andy Weir’s book, finds Damon playing NASA astronaut Mark Watney, left stranded on Mars after his crewmates on the Ares 3 mission are forced to evacuate by a dust storm.
Looking to stave off death on the Red Planet, Watney fights for survival, trying 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, and the Hermes astronauts try to help when they finally learn he’s alive.
Scott, working from a script by Drew Goddard, is looking to start filming in November having scouted Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert terrain and Bucharest as potential shooting locations.
Chastain is part of the cast for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, due November 7, and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, out October 16 2015. Awaiting UK release dates are The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby: Them, Miss Julie and A Most Violent Year. Wiig will be seen in The Skeleton Twins, also out November 7, Nasty Baby and The Diary Of A Teenage Girl.