Currently in theaters opposite Sofia Vergara in Anne Fletcher’s buddy comedy Hot Pursuit, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line, Legally Blonde) has lined up a new project with the original drama Pale Blue Dot. Variety has the news, reporting that Fox Searchlight has acquired the spec script for the film from relative newcomers Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi.
Named for the famous photograph of Earth take by the Voyager 1 in 1990, Pale Blue Dot will follow Witherspoon as an astronaut who finds her very sense of reality coming undone after returning from an extended mission.
Witherspoon recently received her second Oscar nomination for her performance as author Cheryl Strayed in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild. Among her upcoming projects are the science fiction satire Downsizing, reuniting the star with Election helmer Alexander Payne, and the Walt Disney Pictures family comedy Wish List, wherein Witherspoon will play a woman who, as a child, made ten wishes on a single coin at a wishing well, unaware that her coin never quite reached the well’s magical bottom. When the coin is finally jostled loose 25 years later, the wishes all come true in the middle of her unsuspecting adult life.
Witherspoon is also set to also produce Pale Blue Dot alongside her Pacific Standard Productions partner Bruna Papandrea. Brown and DiGuiseppi will executive produce with Taylor Friedman and David Greenbaum overseeing for the studio.
