Ryan Gosling could be in line to star as the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, in a new biopic from Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle, reports Deadline.
Chazelle wants the Canadian star of Drive and Half Nelson to play the astronaut in First Man, which is based on the James Hansen biography First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong. The project, with Spotlight’s Josh Singer adapting Hansen’s book, is being pitched to tie in with the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landings.
Gosling and Chazelle are currently working together on the musical romance La La Land, which also stars Gosling’s Gangster Squad co-star Emma Stone. The movie, described as a paean to the Los Angeles dream factory, sees Gosling as charming jazz pianist Sebastian and Stone as a lonely, aspiring actor named Mia.
Clint Eastwood bought the screen rights to Hansen’s book about Armstrong way back in 2003 but later dropped out of the project. The current version is set up at studio Universal.
Chazelle’s film arrives on the horizon at a time when space drama is experiencing a major resurgence in Hollywood following the $488m (£323m) box office success of Ridley Scott’s critically-acclaimed The Martian this year, and even better returns for Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Gravity ($723m) in 2013 and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar ($675m) last year.
Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt will star in the $150m (£99m)-budgeted Passengers as interstellar travellers who awake from cryogenic sleep almost a century too early and embark on a romance, while Robert Pattinson will take the lead role in the science-fiction film High Life from novelist-turned-screenwriter Zadie Smith and French director Claire Denis, about a group of criminals who accept a mission in space to become the subjects of a human reproduction experiment. Tom Cruise is also due to reunite with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman on a new science-fiction movie, Luna Park, which centres on a group of renegade space scientists vying to secure a power source on the moon.
Gosling will next star in The Big Short, from Anchorman director Adam McKay. The comedy drama stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo in the true story of a group of investors who worked out how to “short” the housing market and benefit from the US financial crisis of 2007–2010. The well-reviewed film is due for a limited release in the US on 11 December and arrives in the UK on 22 January.
