On the heels of steering 10 Cloverfield Lane out of the shadows and toward box office success, J.J. Abrams is dusting himself down in preparation for his latest producing gig with Bad Robot’s God Particle.
Since nailing down a 2017 release window, the brainy sci-fi feature has been quietly picking up steam in a genre that has no shortage of high-profile features in the pipeline – namely Passengers and Seth Rogen’s The Something – with today bringing word that David Oyelowo (Selma) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Concussion) have enlisted for Julius Onah’s upcoming thriller.
No details were given as to the characters they’ll play, though it’s a safe bet that they’ll portray some of the scientists dabbling with the elusive Higgs Boson. In physics, the God Particle is the evocative title given to a subatomic particle that lends atoms their mass, and has been a fundamental part of physics research over the past half-decade or so – research often conducted at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.
In Jung’s feature film, though, Oyelowo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw will likely be members of a space crew who, after accidentally jump-starting a particle collider to catastrophic effect, are left floating in the isolating blackness of space. Cast astray, it’s here that the wayward ship and its lonesome astronauts detect signs of another vessel in the nearby vicinity, throwing up nine kinds of potential plot threads that could be brewing behind the scenes at Bad Robot.
Partnering with Star Trek Beyond scribe Doug Jung, we understand the screenwriter drafted in to rework a script originally pitched by Freaks of Nature and 22 Jump Street scribe, Oren Uziel.
God Particle will plot course for the inky blackness of space – and theaters – come February 24, 2017.
