Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway & more join James Gray’s Armageddon Time

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

After directing Brad Pitt in AD ASTRA, James Gray's next film is shaping up to be a little more down to Earth, and it looks as though the film will be featuring an all-star cast. According to Deadline, Robert De Niro (THE IRISHMAN), Oscar Isaac (DUNE), Anne Hathaway (SERENITY), and Donald Sutherland (AD ASTRA) are slated to join the cast of ARMAGEDDON TIME, a period drama which is already slated to star Cate Blanchett (NIGHTMARE ALLEY).

James Gray is slated to write and direct ARMAGEDDON TIME, which is a big-hearted coming-of-age story based on his own childhood memories. The story will explore friendship and loyalty against the backdrop of an America which is poised to elect Ronald Reagon as president. Gray is hoping that production will be able to get underway in New York just as soon as COVID-19 allows. The director also spoke to Deadline about his desire to try something different from AD ASTA.

Every film you make is different, but I’m trying to do something that is the opposite of the vast, lonely and dark void of the movie I just directed. I’m anxious to make something that is very much about people, about human emotions and interactions between people, and I want it to be filled with warmth and tenderness. In some sense, yes it’s about my childhood, but an illustration of familial love really on every level. I’m of the belief that most people do their best and that they try their best under difficult circumstances and in some sense that’s a beautiful thing and very moving to me.

"In a grander sense if I may sound a little sententious and pretentious, history and myth always begin in the microcosm of the personal and though you are using something so small and specific in your life, the result can become universal if it accesses real emotion," Gray continued. "I’ve tried to move to the opposite of a cold dark space. I want to be political and historic about it, but fill it with love and warmth. What happened with me, very simply, I got in big trouble when I was around 11, though the boys are 12 in the movie, and the story is about my movement from the public education that I got into private school and a world of privilege. This film is about what that meant for me and how lucky I was, and how unlucky my friend was and about that break meant for me and what it meant for him."