Legendary French filmmaker Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, White Material, Bastards) will make her English-language debut with a new film set in space, and will collaborate on the screenplay with Zadie Smith. Have you bought your ticket yet?
Screen Daily got the scoop on the as-yet-untitled project, which will reportedly take place “beyond the solar system” in a “future that seems like the present.” Denis will write the screenplay with British novelist and Flavorwire favorite Smith (White Teeth) and Smith’s husband, the Irish novelist and poet Nick Laird (Glover’s Mistake).
Smith and Laird aren’t Denis’s only high-profile collaborators; Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is on board (presumably in some sort of art direction/design capacity), as are Stuart Staples of Tindersticks (who has scored previous Denis pictures) and astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau, whose research on black holes and cosmology make him a likely technical advisor.
Casting and international sales are currently underway for the film, which Screen Daily anticipates will begin shooting late this year or early in 2016.