Benedict Cumberbatch and Laura Dern to star in sleepless sci-fi movie from Justin Kurzel

Sleeping is pretty cool. It reenergizes you, gives you a chance to stay in one place without having to move too much, and sometimes you have wacky dreams where your teeth fall out or you’re in school taking a test you didn’t know about. But what the new film from director Justin Kurzel—who is referred to in this Variety story as the director of Assassin’s Creed first and the director of the Palme d’Or-nominated Nitram second—presupposes is: What if sleep is dumb and bad?

In the world of Morning, humanity “has evolved beyond the need to sleep thanks to a new pill and artificial sun.” The movie will star Laura Dern as an “early proponent” of this “no sleep” lifestyle… at least until her husband, Benedict Cumberbatch, dies and “her sleepless world crumbles around her.” At the same time, their son, Noah Jupe, has fallen in with a bad crowd that wants to “rebel in an attempt to reclaim their dreams.” Who likes metaphors? Because this movie’s got some!

Morning is being produced by SunnyMarch, the label founded by Cumberbatch and Adam Ackland, and in a statement, Ackland referred to it as “a joyful, reflective, and defiant story about a reality not so far from our own where a preoccupation with productivity as destroyed our ability to connect, grieve, and love.” Again: metaphors.

Now let’s take a moment to contemplate what this sleepless world would mean for animal life. Do owls come out during the day? Or are they all extinct? Will anyone ever hear the song “Baker Street” again if they’re not cruising around after the sun goes down? That’s not about animals, but it was the only other nighttime thing we could think of. Fireworks happen at night, that’s another one, but those are the only things that happen at night.