The Dog Stars: Jacob Elordi in talks to join Ridley Scott’s post-pandemic apocalyptic thriller

The world is Jacob Elordi’s oyster after crushing his role as Felix Catton in Emerald Fennell’s sexy and psychotic thriller Saltburn and lining up projects like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, new episodes of Euphoria, and reteaming with Fennell for her adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Unafraid to pile his plate high with promising parts, Jacob Elordi is in talks to join the cast of Ridley Scott’s pandemic thriller The Dog Stars.

The Dog Stars hails from 20th Century Studios and is based on the 2012 novel by Peter Heller (Burn, The River, The Painter, The Last Ranger). Initially, Scott was reteaming with Gladiator II star Paul Mescal for The God Stars, but scheduling conflicts with his part in Sam Mendes’ Beatles anthology kept him from participating. Sources say Mescal plays Paul McCartney in Mendes’ upcoming film, making him essential to the project.

Elordi would play Hig in The Dog Stars, a civilian pilot living a lonely life on an abandoned Colorado airbase with his dog and a hard-as-nails ex-marine. When a band of scavengers called The Reapers invades their space, Hig and his compatriots must prepare for battle.

Here’s a synopsis of Heller’s novel:

“Hig’s wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.”

Mark L. Smith, who wrote The Revenant and the upcoming Netflix mini-series American Primeval, is partnering with Christopher Wilkinson (Ali, Nixon, Birth of the Dragon) to pen the screenplay. Ridley Scott will likely hunker down on The Dog Stars after completing work on You Should Be Dancing, a biopic focusing on one of the best-selling groups of all time, The Bee Gees.

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