Both Oscar Isaac and Alex Garland are seen as stars on the rise. Isaac has been winning over audiences, critics, and filmmakers alike thanks to commanding performances in films like INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. 2016 is a breakout year for the actor, thanks to roles like Poe Dameron in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS and Apocalypse in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE. Garland, on the other hand, has been making a name for himself behind the camera. He wrote 28 DAYS LATER, SUNSHINE, and DREDD, and his directorial debut EX MACHINA was extremely well-received when it came out in 2015. It now sounds like Garland is turning to his EX MACHINA star, Isaac, to join his latest.

Garland is working on an adaptation of the novel ANNIHILATION, by Jeff VanderMeer, and- according to Tracking Board- Oscar Isaac has signed on to join him. Isaac will be joining a cast that already includes Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson. 

Here’s the official Amazon summary of the ANNIHILATION novel, a sci-fi thriller:

“Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one anotioner, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers?they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding?but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.”

The prevailing thought is that Isaac is playing the troubled husband of Portman- who is the story’s narrator. He was on the 11th expedition, and came back a broken man- with amnesia, and fighting an aggressive form of cancer. 

ANNIHILATION is set to start filming this spring, with no release date announced as of now.

SOURCE: Tracking Board