How do you scoop up seven actors, shoot them into space to work on a 1970s-style space station and then return them safely to the Earth? The answer is, you don’t. So it is that, like so many dogs and chimps before them, we must bid farewell to Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Marisa Coughlan, Matt Bomer, Jerry O’Connell, Kali Rocha and Kylie Rogers. Their sacrifice will not be in v... Sorry, we’re now being told it was all just a film called Space Station 76, shot on a set in Los Angeles.

The man responsible for this under-the-radar project is actor/ performance coach/playwright Jack Plotnick, who co-wrote the film, convinced the cast to come aboard and directed it all.

Space Station 76 takes place on the titular orbiting platform, where Wilson is the bitter, suicidal captain, Tyler the new assistant captain who arrives and causes tension, Bomer a technician with a robot hand and Coughlin his manipulative wife.

According to Plotnick, he wanted to use the situation as a metaphor for his ‘70s childhood.

"People think that the 1970s were about the discos and the free love, but in the suburbs you were left feeling, ‘Where’s the party?’” he tells the Hollywood Reporter. "So the emotional story is what I felt in the '70s. My parents weren’t happy together and they stuck it out for the kids. It’s an homage to them. And in one way, I think we’re like these solitary ships in space trying to connect.”

After a relatively swift 20-day shoot, Plotnick will now be ploughing through post-production in order to get the movie out next year. Meanwhile, we’re looking into a Kickstarter fund to have anyone planning a new Big Momma’s film launched on a mission to explore Jupiter. No space ship involved.