Academy Award winner Halle Berry has closed a deal to star in the female lead role for director / screenwriter / producer Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming science fiction epic Moonfall. Lionsgate acquired North American rights to Moonfall late last year.
In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact, and against all odds, a ragtag team launches an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love and risking everything to land on the lunar surface and save our planet from annihilation.
Halle Berry will play a NASA astronaut-turned-administrator whose previous space mission holds a clue about an impending catastrophe. She will be joined in the cast by Josh Gad.
Directed by Roland Emmerich, Moonfall begins production this fall in Montreal with a script written by Emmerich, his 2012 co-writer Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen. Emmerich is producing the independent feature film under his Centropolis Entertainment banner with Kloser producing through his company, Street Entertainment. Executive producers are Dennis Wang, James Wang, J.P. Pettinato, Marco Shepherd, Ute Emmerich, Carsten Lorenz, and Stuart Ford.
Like last year’s #1 box office hit Midway, Emmerich and Centropolis are independently producing and financing Moonfall, overseeing all aspects of production, financing, delivery, and distribution and marketing in collaboration with Lionsgate, AGC International, and the film’s distribution partners around the world. After a high-profile sales launch at Cannes 2019, Centropolis, AGC, and CAA sold out Moonfall worldwide. In addition to Lionsgate for North America, key international distribution partners include Huayi Brothers in China, Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK, Leonine in Germany and Switzerland, Metropolitan in France, Sun in Latin America and Spain, IIF in Italy, Roadshow in Australia, Kino Film in Japan, Noori Pictures in South Korea, Central Partnership in Russia, and DFW in Benelux.
Moonfall is slated to be released theatrically by Lionsgate in North America in 2021.
Halle Berry recently wrapped her directorial debut, Bruised, in which she also stars as a female MMA fighter. She earned an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster’s Ball. Her recent work includes John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which was a box office smash. Berry is represented by WME and Management 360.
(Source : press release)