Co-written by the screenwriter of Moon, Slingshot stars Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne and Tomer Capone as fractious astronauts. Here’s a trailer:
To the ever-growing ‘unhappy men in space’ sci-fi subgenre we can now add Slingshot – a psychological thriller starring Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne and The Boys’ Tomer Capone as a trio of stressed-out astronauts.
The explorers are on a mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan, when something goes awry and they’re forced to attempt a risky slingshot manoeuvre in order to reach their destination. Meanwhile, Affleck’s character begins to hallucinate. Oh, and Fishburne’s brought a revolver with him for some reason.
Aside from a cracking cast, Slingshot has a good pedigree behind the camera. Its director is Sweden’s Mikael Håfström, director of such genre pieces as 1408, based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, The Rite, an enjoyably daft exorcism horror from 2011, and Escape Plan, which put Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in prison (in the film, not in real life). Its script, meanwhile, is by R Scott Adams and Nathan Parker – the latter being the screenwriter behind director Duncan Jones’ 2009 sci-fi gem, Moon.
In terms of its premise, Slingshot recalls Spaceman, the deep space drama starring Adam Sandler that emerged on Netflix in February, not to mention any number of astronaut-based sci-fi staples, including Solaris, Interstellar, Ad Astra, Sunshine, High Life and Event Horizon – the latter also starring Laurence Fishburne. We’d have thought he’d have sworn off the idea of going back into space again given what happened in that 1997 slab of astral gothic horror.
Out in US cinemas on the 30th August courtesy of indie distributor Bleecker Street, Slingshot doesn’t have a firm UK release date as yet, though Signature Entertainment, which has the distribution rights on these shores, tells us that it’s currently pencilled in for an early 2025 launch.
The official synopsis, if you’re into such things, goes like this:
A psychological thriller starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne, SLINGSHOT follows an elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality.
