James Gray's 'Ad Astra' Moves To May 2019, Conveniently Following Cannes

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Good news bad news time. The bad first, always. James Gray‘s sci-fi movie “Ad Astra” will not be coming out this fall. While the movie did have a January 2019 release date, many hoped/prayed/presumed the movie would receive 2018 Oscar-qualifying run. And truthfully, reps for the film were quietly preparing for that possibility, including the picture in their fall preview offering for journalists in the off chance that the film was ready and 20th Century Fox was willing to find a slot for it in November or December. So, “Ad Astra” was an unofficial fall 2018 TBD film for a few weeks there, but the bad news is that’s not happening.

READ MORE: 56 Must-See Films: The 2018 Fall Movie Preview

The good news is “Ad Astra,” once saddled with an unremarkable Jan 11, 2019 release date has been pushed further back to a much more desirable release. Box Office tracker Exhibitor Relations revealed yesterday that “Ad Astra” is now arriving into theaters on May 24, 2019. That’s the same day of Disney‘s “Aladdin” which has many speculating since Disney and Fox are merging soon that date won’t last. But it’s not like 20th Century Fox will be disappearing entirely. The studio will definitely be in business to some degree and especially for films like “Ad Astra,” which are essentially done and made far before the merger.

READ MORE: Director James Gray Talks ‘The Immigrant’ & Details Of His Sci-Fi Film ‘Ad Astra’ In 50 Minute Talk [Listen]

This date, probably not-so-coincidentally, fits in quite nicely with the Cannes 2019 schedule; the festival in France runs May 14-25. Already heavily favored for Cannes and similar festivals—four of Gray’s six previous films have debuted at the Croisette—it’s a good bet “Ad Astra” will likely make its world premiere in France. Labeled as an “Hearts Of Darkness”-esque epic sci-fi thriller, “Ad Astra” stars Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland and Jamie Kennedy. It is Pitt’s belated starring role in a James Gray film as the two have been trying to work together for years (Pitt almost starred in “The Lost City of Z,” and an assassin movie he is no longer working on called “The Gray Man“). Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment produced ‘Z’ and “Ad Astra.”

“Ad Astra” centers on an astronaut (Pitt) who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet.

“I thought it would be interesting to mix a [Joseph] Conrad-type idea with something that goes terribly wrong,” Gray said in 2016 about the movie. “And they choose people that they think are appropriately emotionally repressed [to embark on the mission but] they’re not repressed enough and this craziness that happens on the way.”

Perhaps the “Ad Astra” push was not a bad idea considering the astronaut movie “First Man” is in theaters now and Claire Denis‘ mind-bending sci-fi exploration movie “High Life,” just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (and just played the New York Film Festival) this fall. Where it lays on the sci-fi/just-astronaut-exploration Venn diagram remains to be seen. 20th Century Fox has not made the word quite official yet, but Exhibitor Relations info generally hits places like Box Office Mojo or Rotten Tomatoes a few days later.