Tessa Thompson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to star in space whodunit, Ash
Ash is the sophomore feature from Grammy Award winning musician and film-maker, Flying Lotus
Fresh off the heels of her starring turns in Thor: Love And Thunder and Westworld season 4, it looks like Tessa Thompson is going for something… a bit weirder. Per Deadline, the actress is set to headline Ash, a new sci-fi thriller from Grammy Award-winning rapper, DJ, record producer, and film-maker, Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison). Thompson will star alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in one of his first onscreen film appearances since 2020's The Trial Of The Chicago 7.
In a new turn from her previous two roles, Thompson will be portraying a human character forced to interact with potentially nefarious super-human beings—or, she might be the villain after all. The film’s description sees Thompson’s character waking up on a distant planet to find that the crew of her space station has been viciously killed. She must then decide if she can trust the man (Gordon-Levitt) sent to rescue her. But as their investigation into what happened sets in motion a terrifying chain of events, he begins to wonder how innocent she really is. Either way, it sounds like someone is going to turn out to be an alien.
Ash will be adapted from an original screenplay by Jonni Remmler and will be produced by XYZ Films and GFC Films, with Neill Blomkamp executive producing alongside Echo Lake Entertainment.
Flying Lotus recently directed a section of horror anthology V/H/S/99, which will be premiering at TIFF this year. Ash represents the multi-hyphenate’s second feature-length work, for which he will also be composing an original score. We don’t know anything definitive about the style or general tone of Ash yet, but if his first film, Kuso—a spectacle of body horror which we once deemed simply “disgusting”—tells us anything, it is that this film will not be for the faint of heart.