Netflix has released a trailer for post-apocalyptic sci-fi film ‘The Midnight Sky’, directed by and starring George Clooney, which premieres Wednesday, 23rd December 2020 on the streaming service.
This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine (Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones – ‘Rogue One’, ‘The Aeronauts’) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.
Alongside Clooney and Jones, the movie also stars David Oyelowo (‘Les Misérables’, ‘Selma’), Kyle Chandler (‘Catch-22’, ‘Bloodline’), Demián Bichir (‘Grand Hotel’, ‘The Hateful Eight’) and Tiffany Boone (‘Hunters’, ‘The Chi’), alongside newcomer Caoilinn Springall.
Based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s acclaimed novel Good Morning, Midnight, the screenplay adaptation comes from Mark L. Smith (‘The Revenant’), and is directed by George Clooney.
Interestingly, although the film was actually brought to him as an acting project by Netflix, he loved it so much, he decided he’d like to direct it too. “I’d done a couple of space movies, so I knew how complicated the space stuff was going to be, but this one felt like a really intimate story about what mankind is capable of doing to mankind,” he commented in a virtual panel at the BFI London Film Festival this week. “I also liked the idea of a story of redemption, and this was kind of the ultimate story of redemption.”
Although it is a Netflix project, they had originally intended it to get a release in IMAX, so it was shot on 65mm film… then the pandemic happened… So you can be sure it’ll look beautiful, despite the fact you’re having to see it on a screen which is somewhat smaller than they originally envisioned!
It does sound like the shoot for the film was not straightforward either. The first part of the shoot took place in Iceland, at 40 degrees below zero with 70 mph winds. Another complication came from Felicity Jones, who discovered she was pregnant in the middle of filming. Whilst Jones herself was totally “gung-ho” about getting on with things, Clooney erred on the side of caution, altering the script to incorporate the pregnancy.
“She wanted to do all the wirework. But I was like ‘No, we’re not putting anyone pregnant on a wire!’” added Clooney. He continues to say that changing the story, so that Jone’s character Sully had gotten pregnant whilst in space, “gave us something to lean into for the end of the movie, which I think ends up being a big bonus for us, along the way.”
‘The Midnight Sky’ premieres Wednesday, 23rd December 2020 on Netflix UK and Worldwide.
