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Netflix’s next sci-fi movie has a surprising lead. The streamer just released the first (very brief) teaser for Spaceman, which stars Adam Sandler as an astronaut who encounters a mysterious alien creature (voiced by Paul Dano) while on a research mission in space. The film, directed by Johan Renck, sounds weird and grim and is based on the Czech novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař.
Here’s how Netflix describes the premise:
Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.
There’s not a lot to go on in the brief teaser, but the setup holds a lot of promise, and I, for one, am happy to see Sandler return to serious fare. In a post on Netflix’s blog, Renck said of Sandler, “I really wanted to have a performance from him that had nothing to do with the Adam Sandler we all know.”
The rest of the Spaceman cast includes Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, and Isabella Rossellini, and the film starts streaming on Netflix on March 1st, 2024.