Keanu Reeves’ outer space romantic drama Passengers, written by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus), was seemingly languishing in development hell for many years until last year when things started moving forward on the project.
Reese Witherspoon joined the project last May but she dropped out and a few months later, Rachel McAdams joined the project. Having already picked up the project at Cannes, The Weinstein Company set a April 3, 2015 release date shortly after Rachel McAdams joined with “Game of Thrones” director Brian Kirk at the helm.
Less than a week ago, McAdams dropped out of the project and The Weinstein Company followed suit by dropping the movie altogether, making it seem like Passengers may never happen.
Now TheWrap is claiming that the new Focus Features is coming forward to negotiate North American distribution for the movie that was supposed to start shooting this month but was postponed by the departure of McAdams. Focus hasn’t commented on the deal, but clearly there’s interest in the project outside The Weinstein Company, who are notoriously famous for delaying their movies. (And in this case, losing their lead actress, they would have a good reason to do so.)
The producers are already out to other actresses to star opposite Reeves, who is also producing the film in which he plays the passenger of a spacecraft taking thousands of people to a distant planet when his sleep chamber malfunctions.
