Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a role in Disney’s incoming Pinocchio, but he’ll soon be trading in the fairy tale family film for a science-fiction movie. It is titled Ash and he will be joined by Tessa Thompson on the upcoming independent production.
News of the project is reported today in an article from Variety. It follows a space station worker who awakens on a planet to find her peers viciously murdered and ultimately she is forced to work with the man sent to rescue her. As the investigation continues, the man begins to wonder how innocent the woman really is. Neill Blomkamp is behind the scenes as an executive producer. On the music side, Flying Lotus (Steve Ellison) will be scoring. He is a Grammy-winning producer, composer, filmmaker and rapper and recently worked on a segment of the V/H/S/99 horror film in the anthology franchise, which began back in 2012.
The project is financed by XYZ Films and will be sold worldwide at the Toronto International Film Festival next week. Shooting will take place in New Zealand next year and XYZ Films’ Nate Bolotin and GFC Films representative Matthew Metcalfe are excited for it, saying the following in a joint statement:
“We couldn’t be happier for Tessa and Joseph to headline this film; they are both incredibly talented and gifted actors.”
Thompson is currently in post-production on Creed III. In addition to Pinocchio, in which he voices Jiminy Cricket, Gordon-Levitt also has Providence on his docket. Gordon-Levitt began acting in 1992 with Beethoven while Thompson made her debut in 2006 with When a Stranger Calls. Both have appeared in comic book films of the independent, Marvel and D.C. varieties and Gordon-Levitt has dipped his toes into horror in the Halloween saga. He has been floated by fans to join Thompson and others in the MCU as the franchise version of Reed Richards in the future, too.