Production has already started on ‘Oblivion,’ the first of two sci-fi films that Tom Cruise is starring in, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more Oscar winners to join the cast. Deadline is reporting that last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress, Melissa Leo, has signed on to star in this futuristic thriller.
Leo won her Oscar for her role as Alice Ward in ‘The Fighter’ and was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Lucy Gessler in the HBO mini series ‘Mildred Pierce.’ She can be next seen in the film ‘Flight,’ a Robert Zemeckis film that also stars Denzel Washington (‘Safe House’, ‘Déjà vu’) and Bruce Greenwood (Captain Pike in ‘Star Trek) that will be in theaters sometime this year. Currently, Leo is filming the third season of HBO’s ‘Treme.’ Luckily for her, ‘Treme’ is filmed in New Orleans and ‘Oblivion’ is filming in Baton Rouge so she won’t have to travel far to do her scenes.
‘Oblivion’ is set in an apocalyptic future where the population lives in the clouds as Earth has now become inhabitable. Cruise plays a veteran soldier named Jak who repairs the drones on the Earth’s surface that hunts down the aliens who destroyed our planet. He has a wife (Olga Kurylenko) who lives in the clouds. When a mysterious woman (Andrea Riseborough) crash-lands nearby, their encounter sets off an eye-opening chain of events that forces him to question his world view. Morgan Freeman will play a character named Malcolm Beech who is leader of the human resistance on Earth while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (‘Game of Thrones‘) will play the role of an “intimidating and highly skilled military technology and weapons expert” named Sykes who crosses paths with Cruise’s character. At this time, there’s no word as to who Leo will be playing.
The film is based on a 2009 graphic novel that director Joseph Kosinki wrote. Screenwriter William Monaham (‘The Departed’, ‘Kingdom of Heaven’) wrote the original draft of the screenplay with Karl Gajdusek (‘Dead Like Me’) and Michael Arndt (‘Toy Story 3’, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’) each credited for rewrites.
‘Oblivion’ is scheduled to be released on April 26, 2013.
