With its renewed momentum, sci-fi project Passengers is coming together properly under the aegis of director Morten Tyldum. He’s now looking to add Laurence Fishburne to the mix{
The script, written by Prometheus' Jon Spaihts, chronicles a ship en route to a distant colony with all of its crew in cryosleep. A malfunction causes one man (Chris Pratt) to be rudely awakened 90 years before anyone else. Unable to fix the situation and seemingly doomed to spend his time dying alone, he decides to take the unusual and controversial step of waking up a fellow passenger (Jennifer Lawrence).
Quite what Fishburne will be up to, even if he does make a deal, has yet to be announced. Will he be another passenger? Will he just be seeing the ship off? Is he destined only to appear on view screens? We do at least know what one other cast member is doing in the film, as Michael Sheen signed up last month to play the ship’s robot.
Passengers should be filming later this year, with Sony recently announcing a December 21, 2016 release date in the States. Whether we get it at the same time or close to that date has yet to be ascertained. Fishburne, who was part of the cast of the late, lamented Hannibal TV series, will be seen in Standoff and is back as Perry White in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, readying for cape fear on March 25 over here. For more on the movie, check out the current issue of **Empire.