Lion director Garth Davis followed his heart-tugging tale with 2018's Mary Magdalene, and it looks like he's going sci-fi for his next film. He has Saoirse Ronan, Normal People's Paul Mescal and LaKeith Stanfield attached to star in Foe.
The film finds Davis and author Iain Reid adapting the latter's best-selling novel. It's set in the near future where corporate power and environmental decay are ravaging the planet. Junior (Mescal) and Hen (Ronan) are a young couple married seven years and living a solitary life on their isolated farm. One night, a stranger named Terrance (Stanfield) knocks on their door, bringing news that throws their lives into turmoil: Junior has been randomly selected to travel to a large, experimental space station orbiting Earth. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Hen won’t have a chance to miss him, because she won’t be left alone — not even for a moment. Hen will have familiar company that pushes her to make a life-changing decision.
"I’ve been on the hunt to do something in sci-fi, it was always on my bucket list, and also to find material I could make an actor’s piece with a Cassavetian level of performance," Davis tells Deadline. "I read Foe and could not put it down. It’s incredibly suspenseful, very moving and dealt with sci-fi in a most grounded way that spoke to where we are heading as a society, with a lot of the questions we all have, explored in a profound way. And the love story just broke my heart, this story of self-determination, fighting for the things that are most precious in our lives, and reminding audiences that this time we have here is precious and the way we treat each other is the way we need to be treating the planet. Foe was just a bull’s-eye, for me." For more form the director, head to Deadline's site.
Davis intends to kick off filming in January.