Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars Cast Adds Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin And Guy Pearce

Ridley Scott doesn’t hang around, does he? After finishing Gladiator II, which is due on home entertainment release next month, the British filmmaker is already hard at work on his next film.

Deadline is reporting that the cast of his new film, The Dog Stars, has added three high-profile actors to the ensemble in the form of Margaret Qualley (The Substance), Josh Brolin (Dune: Part Two) and Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), with the trio ing the already announced Jacob Elordi who leads the film. Elordi replaced original star Paul Mescal recently due to other commitments.

The Dog Stars is based on a 2012 novel by Peter Heller, and the script is being written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, Twisters). The film is set in a near future where “society has changed profoundly,” with Elordi leading the film as Hig, a pilot living on an abandoned airbase. After a chance meeting with an ex-marine named Bangley (played by Brolin), “are forced to work together to navigate this dangerous and uncompromising new world.”

Qualley will play Cima, a young doctor and daughter to a “world-weary rancher,” set to be played by Pearce. The pair will meet Hig along his journey through the world.

Synopsis: “The Dog Stars is set in a near future where an unnamed pandemic has decimated American society,” a description of the plot reads. “A civilian pilot lives a lonely life on an abandoned Colorado airbase with his dog and a tough ex-marine. The two men couldn’t be more mismatched but depend on each other to fend off roaming invaders. When a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside the pilot 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.”

The Dog Stars is set to start filming in the spring, with the report also suggesting that the long-gestating Bee Gees biopic that Scott has been circling potentially the filmmaker’s next film after this one.

No release date info on either just yet.