As you might’ve noticed, your friends at Flavorwire are sort of bananas about Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (read all about it here and here and here and here). So we were already keyed up for his next effort, an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation , concerning a four-woman crew exploring “Area X,” a mysterious land mass and “massive topographic anomaly” filled with “life forms that surpass understanding” (thanks, book jacket copy!). It sounds like exactly the kind of brainy sci-fi Garland – who also wrote Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Never Let Me Go – excels at. And now there’s even greater cause for excitement: Tessa Thompson is in talks to join an already ace cast.
Natalie Portman and Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez were previously locked in for two of the four key roles (“an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist”). The Wrap is now reporting Thompson is “being eyed” to join that cast, fresh off the success of Creed – which hey, look at that, just passed $100 million. Thompson also killed in Dear White People, Selma, Veronica Mars, and pretty much everything she’s breezed into.
Still awaiting word on who will fill that fourth role, but I’m just gonna go ahead and send them my money now.