Passengers

Somewhere, James Cameron is shaking his head and chuckling to himself, wondering why the heck he didn’t think of setting Titanic in space because it seems so obvious now — especially with this new trailer for Passengers, the Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence sci-fi romance that looks like it was made with an algorithm. Take the two most beloved actors on the planet, put them in a shiny, futuristic sci-fi movie and smoosh their faces together while making kissy noises. Cha-ching.

When you’re alone on a giant spaceship sailing through the outer limits, how do you pass the time? Is it by swimming in the ship’s luxurious pool, only to have the power go out and the gravity turn off and get caught in a weightless maelstrom while you drown, stuck in a giant water balloon bubble with no one to call for help? On ...

Original sci-fi stories are slowly becoming more popular in Hollywood. It’s an exciting prospect, as normally we’re all inundated with adaptations of superhero comics or popular books or remakes of older films that we already know the endings to. Movies like Interstellar and Oblivion are, arguably, a lot more exciting, allowing a director or a writer to create their own world from scratch, and keeping the audience in the dark as to how it all ends. Passengers is one of these, a sci-fi romance with a central mystery at its core that’s bound to keep viewers guessing until the end.

If you’re going to make a movie that’s basically just two people in the entire cast, it might as well be two of the most charismatic and attractive people on the planet.

Trailer teasers seem to be the next big thing for large-budget blockbusters these days, giving us a taste of a taste of the movie we’ll be buying tickets for months from now. Today brings us the trailer teaser (or trailer trailer) for the new original sci-fi Passengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. Written by Prometheus scribe Jon Spaihts and helmed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), Passengers is set on a luxury spaceship housing 5,000 passengers all bound for a colony 120 years’ journey away. For everyone to remain alive until they get to their new home, all of the people onboard are put into hypersleep so that their bodies remain in stasis. Mysteriously, two of these passengers are awakened by the ship 90 years before the end of the trip, they first fall for each other and then learn that they’re the only people who can save the crew from a deadly malfunction.

Now that summer is officially drawing to a close, people are preparing themselves for the inevitable shift from the blockbuster season to the award season. Sometimes the award season movies have months of build up, with endless festival buzz and Oscar speculation; sometimes, though, a film is just sort of there, expected to do well because of its cast and crew but with no real hype to speak of. One such movie is Passengers, the high-concept science fiction film from Sony starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. Much like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Passengers seems expected that special holiday mark between blend of big budget entertainment and arthouse sensibility.

While it’s not an officially recognized movie genre, the type of film that I’ve come to think of as ‘Being Lonely in Space’ is one of the few genres that can bring together the artistic and the commercial audiences (think of movies like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar or Ridley Scott’s Alien). This is the kind of company Sony hopes will be kept by Passengers, its upcoming sci-fi release with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

Passengers is one of the most anticipated upcoming projects, pairing mega-star and everyone’s favorite imaginary BFF Jennifer Lawrence with recent blockbuster breakout Chris Pratt. The sci-fi romance, which also stars Michael Sheen as a robot, has just added another major name to the cast: Laurence Fishburne.

Sony went on a release date-spree earlier today, scheduling a ton of upcoming films for 2016 and 2017. In addition to Bad Boys 3 and Bad Boys 4, the studio also set a 2017 date for the first film in Stephen King’s Dark Tower franchise and announced dates for a handful of anticipated projects, like Edgar Wright’s latest, the Barbie movie, Underworld 5 and more.

Passengers has taken a long road to development, with Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams attached to star at various points along the way. But with The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum at the helm and mega-stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt on board, the sci-fi romance is pushing full speed ahead. And it just invited another actor to join: Masters of Sex star Michael Sheen, who has been cast in the role of a robot.