Ad Astra Director's Next Film Has A Stacked Cast, With Oscar Issac, Anne Hathaway, And More

James Gray's 2019 film Ad Astra earned critical acclaim, and while it wasn't hugely profitable (making $131 million worldwide on a $90 budget, before marketing), the director has attracted some top talent for his next film. Deadline has revealed some casting news about the director's upcoming Armageddon Time, and it's all A-listers.

The film's cast includes Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Oscar Issac, Anne Hathaway, and the previously announced Cate Blanchett. It has not been announced who each actor will play as of yet. Sutherland previously starred in Ad Astra, but these other actors have not collaborated with Gray before.

Gray will write and direct the film, and it will be a period drama set in New York based on his own memories from childhood. He told Deadline that it will be " the opposite of the vast, lonely and dark void of the movie I just directed."

Gray further detailed some elements of the film's plot. "What happened with me, very simply, I got in big trouble when I was around 11, though the boys are 12 in the movie, and the story is about my movement from the public education that I got into private school and a world of privilege," he says. "This film is about what that meant for me and how lucky I was, and how unlucky my friend was and about that break meant for me and what it meant for him."

Several of these actors are attached to other notable upcoming projects. De Niro is teaming with Scorsese again for Killers of the Flower Moon, Cate Blanchett is attached to play Lilith in the Borderlands movie, and Oscar Issac will star in this year's Dune.

Cinemas are looking to start reopening in the US in July--in some parts of the world, they've already started reopening, even though upcoming blockbusters like Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984 have been delayed.