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You can see the moment in your heads: a landing pod breaks through the Earth's atmosphere, splashes down in the water, and the astronauts inside joyously reunite with their loved ones in glorious slow motion. But what happens after that part, when you've spent years in the relentless void of space and have to integrate back into normal society? That's the central dilemma of a film called Pale Blue Dot, which will star Reese Witherspoon as a married astronaut who begins an affair with one of her space colleagues and starts to lose composure when she returns to Earth and loses her connection to her family.
Witherspoon has been attached to star in this movie since 2015, and now we know who will direct it: Noah Hawley, the creator of FX's Fargo who is now enjoying success with that network's X-Men adjacent show Legion. He's been involved in movies before — he's part of the writer's room for Universal's upcoming Monsterverse entries — but this will mark his first time directing on the film side.
Deadline brings the news, which also includes word that this will be the first in a two picture deal with Fox Searchlight. The second movie will be Buried Bodies, a drama about the infamous Lake Pleasant Bodies Case from the mid-1970s.
Attorneys Frank Armani and Francis Belge faced the ethical dilemma of upholding attorney-client privilege after their client, accused murderer Robert Garrow, revealed to them the location of the bodies of two additional missing girls. The lawyers verified the findings, but did not report them to police, even though one of the lawyers had a daughter who was a classmate of sisters of one of the murdered girls. The lawyers only divulged information after the killer escaped prison and threatened one of the attorneys. The pair was reviled by the families of the victims and ostracized by the community for their agonizing commitment to their oath.
That sounds like a perfect Hawley project: something grounded in reality, but with a fascinating, complex human angle to explore. I'll be first in line because I think that guy is a genius storyteller, and I'm hoping he breaks out in a big way in the movies.
