A new teaser trailer with a teaser has revealed a new Matt Damon film known as The Martian, and this is what we know of its release date, cast, and story.
The trailer begins with a voice-over explaining how human beings tend to want to help each other. It then shows how Matt Damon's character, Mark Watney, a crew member of the ARES mission gets stranded on Mars. It happens when his crew gets caught in a terrible storm, and Watney is swept away and presumed dead. The crew has no choice but to leave, but Watney is actually alive. The issue is that no one can really help him as he is 140 million miles away.
The trailer then shows Watney doing a video journal saying that in order to survive, he has to "science the s__t out of this". It shows him planting seeds for food, as well as making calculations for transmitting a message to his astronaut friends that he is alive.
This is not the first time that Matt Damon has played a stranded astronaut. In the film Interstellar, he plays an astronaut who is ended up frozen on a planet until thawed out. Of course, he went mad shortly afterward.
The director of the film, Ridley Scott, is no stranger to films set in space. His numerous credits include the original Alien film as well as its prequel Prometheus, both set on a spaceships on alien worlds. The writer of the screenplay, Drew Goddard, has had a lot of success in producing and writing, most recently the first season of Netflix's Daredevil.
The Martian has quite a cast considering that Jessica Chastain, who was also in Interstellar, plays the mission commander. The rest of the astronauts include Michael Pena as the pilot, Kate Mara as the computer expert, and a surgeon played by Sebastian Stan. According to CNET, Aksel Hennie is just a German astronaut.
In addition to the astronaut cast, there is also Jeff Daniels, who looks to be playing the man on Earth, and is reporting the condition of their lost astronaut. Donald Glover, best known for his work on the show Community, is also involved, as well as Chiwetel Ejiofor, who has played many roles in many different films. Sean Bean is involved, and he is usually an actor who is known to die in his given roles. It is interesting to see Kristen Wiig, who is better known for her stint on Saturday Night Live, play a dramatic role.
At first look, the story of The Martian might resemble a 2000 movie known as Red Planet staring Val Kilmer as an astronaut who has to use his wit and ingenuity to survive on Mars. It may have inspired the book that The Martian is based on, which was published in 2012 by Andy Weir. Originally, Weir self-published a chapter at a time, and the e-book became a best-seller and Weir sold the novel to audiobook and print publishers.
The Martian will be released into theaters on November 25, 2015.
