‘The Midnight Sky’: Release date, plot, cast, trailer and all you need to know about Netflix's post-apocalyptic George Clooney starrer
Poised between a brutal endgame for humanity and a moving sense of resilience, Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 novel ‘Good Morning, Midnight’ is that rarest of things: a poetic vision of the complete apocalypse. Based on that book, George Clooney directs screenwriter Mark L Smith’s adaptation and the ensemble includes Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler and Demián Bichir.
Clooney credits Smith’s script with his decision to commit to ‘The Midnight Sky’. “As producers, we’re always trying to hire Mark because he’s a really wonderful writer,” he says. “When you take on a project to direct it, you’re basically saying, ‘I’m going to spend the next two years of my life on this.’ So if you’re going to do that, it really has something to be something that you’re excited about. And this script is beautifully written. It takes a little bit of ‘Gravity’, a film I’ve done, and takes a little bit of his film, ‘The Revenant’, and ties them both together in an organic way.”
Release date
‘The Midnight Sky’ releases globally on Netflix on December 23, 2020. The 125-minute movie will drop at 3.01 am EST or 12.01 am PDT (GMT-8) or 1.31 pm IST.
Plot
After a mysterious global catastrophe devastates the human race, an Arctic-stationed scientist (George Clooney) attempts to warn a deep-space astronaut (Felicity Jones) and her crew of the dangers of returning home. Even in the face of extinction, the human impulse toward connection travels light-years to link two of humanity’s last survivors.
An end-of-the-world tale rendered on a canvas both intimate and cosmic follows two threads in parallel. In one, a lonely scientist occupying a snowy Arctic outpost rides out the last days of humanity’s earthly existence. In another, a team of interplanetary explorers aboard an advanced spacecraft hopes to finally return home after years away. These astronauts, trapped in their own isolation, are unaware of what’s happened to the planet.
Cast
George Clooney
With three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards in his kitty, George Clooney is known for his work on ‘From Dusk till Dawn’ (1996), ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ (2002), ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ (2005), ‘Up in the Air’ (2009), ‘The Descendants’ (2011) and ‘Argo’ (2012). The actor plays the role of Augustine Lofthouse in the movie.
Ethan Peck
The grandson of actor Gregory Peck and his first wife, Finnish-born Greta Kukkonen, he is known for playing a young Spock in ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and is all set to be a part of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’. In the movie, he plays young Augustine.
Felicity Jones
The actress is best known for her performance as Jane Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’. She also starred in movies like ‘Inferno, ‘A Monster Calls’ and ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’. A few other movies to her credit include ‘Northanger Abbey’ (2007), ‘Brideshead Revisited’ (2008), ‘Chéri’ (2009), ‘The Tempest’ (2010), ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (2014), and ‘True Story’ (2015). The actress essays the character of Sully in the film.
David Oyelowo
The actor is known for playing Martin Luther King Jr in the biographical drama ‘Selma’ (2014). and his subsequent roles in ‘A United Kingdom’ (2016) as well as playing the role of a chess coach in ‘Queen of Katwe’ (2016). In the movie, he will be seen in the role of Commander Gordon Adewole.
Tiffany Boone
Best known for her roles in ‘Hunters’, FOX's ‘The Following’, ‘Beautiful Creatures’ and the horror-comedy film ‘Detention’, Tiffany Boone will be seen as Maya in the movie.
The movie also stars Demián Bichir as Sanchez, Kyle Chandler as Mitchell, Caoilinn Springall as Iris and Sophie Rundle as Jean.
Creator
George Clooney
Clooney has directed the movie and plays the lead role. He partnered with producer Grant Heslov and the two first worked together at Section Eight, a company in which Clooney was partnered with Steven Soderbergh.
Mark L Smith
A prolific screenwriter, Mark L Smith is known for his work on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award-winning film, ‘The Revenant’, ‘Vacancy’, and its sequel, ‘Vacancy 2: The First Cut’; ‘The Hole’, ‘Martyrs’, and 2018’s ‘Overlord’, which he co-wrote with Billy Ray. The movie has been produced by Grant Heslov, George Clooney, Keith Redmon, Bard Dorros and Cliff Roberts. Smokehouse Pictures and Anonymous Content have partnered for the production of the movie.
News
George Clooney was hospitalized after suffering from pancreatitis, due to which he lost 30 pounds, “too fast” for his role. The 59-year-old actor, who also directed the new Netflix movie, revealed that he “wasn’t taking care” of himself as he dropped the weight. While Clooney was promoting the sci-fi drama film, he confirmed that he was hospitalized just four days before he was set to join the set.
The two-time Oscar winner told The Mirror: “I think I was trying too hard to lose the weight quickly and probably wasn’t taking care of myself. It took a few weeks to get better and as a director, it’s not so easy because you need energy. We were out on this glacier in Finland, which made it a lot harder work. But it certainly helped with the character.”
Apart from losing weight, he admitted that he was forced to grow out facial hair for the film as well. “I grew a big ugly beard and my son loved it because he’d hide things in it, which I wouldn’t know about until I got to work and I’d be like, ‘Oh, there’s a popsicle stuck in my beard'. But my wife and daughter were really happy when it came off because it was very hard to find a face underneath all that mess,” he told the outlet.
Trailers
In a two-minute 10-second video from the movie, George Clooney — who plays Augustine Lofthouse — says, “Come in, Aether. This is Barbeau Observatory. Are you receiving this? Is anyone out there?”
The caption reads: “Our humanity always endures. This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine (George Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to Earth, where a mysterious global catastrophe has taken place. Clooney directs the adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s acclaimed novel 'Good Morning, Midnight', co-starring David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone. Coming to Netflix December 23.”
Photos
Catch exclusive pictures from the movie here:
Where to watch
‘The Midnight Sky’ is the seventh feature-length film directed by George Clooney and will release on Netflix on December 23, 2020. The movie will be available for streaming after its premiere.
If you like this, you will love these:
‘Forrest Gump’
‘War of the Worlds’
‘The Maze Runner’
‘Beyond Skyline’
‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’