Yahoo Lifestyle Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin And Guy Pearce Join Jacob Elordi In Ridley Scott’s Next Film ‘The Dog Stars’
EXCLUSIVE: Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin and Guy Pearce are in final talks to join Jacob Elordi in Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars at 20th Century Studios. This follows Scott’s massive global hit Gladiator II, one of the biggest grossing films in the filmmaker’s career with grosses just short of $500 million. The Revenant scribe Mark L. Smith adapted the Peter Heller novel. Smith created and wrote Netflix’s recent series American Primeval, the Peter Berg-directed series starring Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin, which left Scott saying he was blown away by the edgy historical tale. Smith also scripted the Universal blockbuster Twisters, with Glen Powell and Daily Edgar-Jones starring.
Elordi plays Hig, a crop duster pilot living on an abandoned Colorado airfield isolated in the foothills of a mountain range and the Great Plains and long deserted farm land and small towns. We discover that society has changed profoundly. Whoever has survived strives to exist within these tragic circumstances.
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Hig shares the spartan amenities of the base with a “Ranger” called Bangley, played by Josh Brolin. They are obliged to tolerate each other in sharing and navigating this dangerous and uncompromising new world. Daily but systematically, Hig pilots his 50 year old Cessna with his only friend, an elderly beloved dog Jasper, his cockpit companion. Searching in ever widening diameters to find and replenish diminishing supplies, but most importantly “his quest” in believing in his question that there must be a world out there.
On his last and deepest “search,” he is obliged to crash land on a small ranch where he meets Cima played by Margaret Qualley, an intern doctor, the daughter of a protective world-weary rancher, played by Guy Pearce who fiercely guards his kin and “fortress.” This encounter evolves into a possible and intelligent future for all.
Ridley Scott will produce with Scott Free president Michael Pruss alongside Mark L. Smith and Cliff Roberts. Production is scheduled to begin at the end of April on location in Italy and the magnificent Dolomite region, which will be standing in for the stark Great Plains and the Rockies.
The film will reteam Scott and Academy Award nominee Josh Brolin, who previously worked together on Universal’s acclaimed American Gangster. This is also as a reteam for Scott and Academy Award nominee Pearce, who collaborated on Prometheus.
Qualley is coming off her critically acclaimed role in the Oscar-nominated horror thriller The Substance. She was also recently seen in Kinds of Kindness and Drive Away Dolls. She can be seen next opposite Glen Powell in Huntington as well as Honey Don’t. She is repped by CAA and Anonymous Content.
Brolin will star in the third installment of the Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man. He is currently shooting The Running Man. His other credits include Dune: Part Two, playing Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Milk (for which he received an Oscar nomination), the Coen Brothers’ True Grit and No Country for Old Men, Oliver Stone’s W., Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. He is repped by CAA and Johnson, Shapiro, Slewett, Kole.
Pearce is coming off his critcally acclaimed role in A24’s The Brutalist where he stars opposite Adrien Brody. The performance has not only earned him some of the best reviews of his career, it has also garnered him several accolades which include an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He is repped by CAA, Independent Talent Group and Shannan Management.
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