Although production on Star Wars: Episode VIII could probably keep him busy until that film’s December 2017 release date, Oscar Isaac has just boarded Alex Garland’s latest sci-fi project, Annihilation. The film, an adaptation of the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach trilogy, will reunite Isaac with his Ex Machina writer-director, a development we hope inspired Isaac to bust out a celebratory dance. After all, VanderMeer seems pretty psyched about the news:
Fortuitous reunions aside, Annihilation sounds like a great fit for Garland, who seems more than capable of adapting VanderMeer’s genre-crossing novel. The story centers on a team comprising an anthropologist, psychologist, surveyor, and a biologist (who serves as the narrator). The four unnamed women are on an expedition to Area X, an uninhabited territory that proves to be rather unwelcoming. Natalie Portman’s nabbed the role of the biologist who, along with the rest of the team, is looking into the disappearances of all the previous expedition crews. And Isaac has been cast as the biologist’s late husband, who was part of the preceding expedition, and whose death adds a layer to his wife’s investigation.
The rest of the fictional crew has been assembled, as Jennifer Jason Leigh is set to play the psychologist and team leader. Gina Rodriguez (Jane The Virgin) and Tessa Thompson (Dear White People) make up the rest of the team, though it’s unclear which discipline they’ll have to master—anthropology or land surveying—for the big screen.