Laurence Fishburne Joins ‘Passengers’

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.

With the cast of Hannibal released from their contracts and the prospects of a fourth season looking increasingly doubtful (ugh), the stars of the series have been picking up new projects. Hugh Dancy has joined Hulu series The Way with Aaron Paul, and according to THR, Laurence Fishburne has lined up a pretty great follow-up with Passengers.

There are no details for Fishburne’s role in the film, which takes place in the future on a spacecraft carrying thousands of passengers to a destination light-years away. One passenger (Pratt) awakens from cryo-sleep early, and takes it upon himself to wake a fellow passenger (Lawrence) to keep him company. Sheen will play a robot in the film, which was written by Prometheus scribe Jon Spaihts and will be directed by The Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum.

Passengers was actually written long before Prometheus and earned some attention on the Black List before it entered a lengthy development process. Keanu Reeves was attached to star at one point before Sony ultimately took the rights.

Just today, the studio announced an official December 21, 2016 release date for the film — just in time for awards season.