Ridley Scott is splitting his time between putting the final touches on Exodus: Gods And Kings and preparing to make his next film, sci-fi adaptation The Martian. He’s building the cast around Matt Damon and has now offered Kate Mara one of the prime roles.
The Martian, adapted from Andy Weir’s book by Drew Goddard, finds Damon playing NASA astronaut Mark Watney. He is 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 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.
With shooting pencilled in for a November start, Jessica Chastain and Kristen Wiig have been circling roles in the film, though we don’t know whether Mara’s option means she has been offered one of those parts instead. Mara's next big screen role is as Sue Storm in Fox’s new take on The Fantastic Four, which lands here on June 18 next year.
Speaking of Scott, he’s adding yet another project to his producing pile, buying the film rights to Betty J. Eadie’s book **Embraced By The Light. The 1992 tome chronicles Eadie’s experiences after dying for four hours during surgery and what she learned from her apparent glimpses of the afterlife.