The Berlin Film Market is going on which is why suddenly there are a bunch of attachments to new projects. Here are just a couple that I want to keep tabs on:
Michael Pena is starring in sci-fi flick, Extinction. The generic title hopefully isn't an indicator of the project's quality. Directed by Ben Young (Hounds of Love) and co-written by Arrival writer Eric Heisserer, Spenser Cohen, and Brad Caleb Kane, the film centers on a man whose nightmare of losing his family turns into a reality when a brutal force invades the planet. The man comes to find an inner strength to keep his family safe from harm. This is the same film that James McAvoy was eyeing a few months ago but he apparently is no longer involved. [Deadline]
We haven't really seen Saoirse Ronan since her Oscar nominated turn in Brooklyn, but now she's lined up an adaptation of Camilla Gibb's bestselling book, Sweetness in the Belly. Ethiopian director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari (Difret) will direct the story which follows "Lilly Abdal, a woman caught between two places: one of her birth parents and the other, where she was adopted, raised and fell in love. Orphaned in Africa as a child, Lilly’s first experience of her parents’ homeland of England is as a refugee, escaping civil war. As lost in this cold new world as her fellow immigrants, Lilly becomes the heart of this disenfranchised community in London, attempting to reunite people with their scattered families. But as her friend Amina discovers, Lilly’s mission isn’t purely altruistic and a passionate lost love affair is revealed between Lilly and Aziz, an idealistic doctor." [Deadline]
