It was back in October of 2011 when we first got word that Christian Cantamessa would be directing a post-apocalyptic project called Wake Cycle, and now that some time has passed, the film has a new name (AIR), an impressive cast, and a few very familiar names on its production team.
EW got the first look still you'll see below of AIR co-stars Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou, who portray workers tasked with maintaining one of the underground bunkers set up to preserve the human race after the Earth's atmosphere has been rendered toxic.
Sandrine Holt ("House of Cards," "The Returned," Terminator: Genesis) also appears in the film, which is slated for a spring 2015 release. Its producers includes "The Walking Dead's" Robert Kirkman and David Alpert along with Chris Ferguson and the Sinister/Insidious team of Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and exec producer Bailey Conway.
The film takes place in an underground facility, where the world's greatest scientists, etc., are placed in sleeping tanks after a nuclear fallout. The previous title's "wake cycle" refers to the six-month intervals of two hours each that allow two custodial workers to maintain the bunker.
Reedus told EW a bit more about the film, which was written by Cantamessa and Chris Pasetto:
"It’s a psychological thriller. It’s a story of two people who are pretty much the last people on the planet. They run a facility that has all the best of the best that’s being held in sleep tanks that will be re-awakened to populate the earth, and one of them thinks of their job as the scientist and the other thinks more of their job as a janitor. And the position is kind of in-between both of those. But one of them discovers that the other has a secret, he’s holding on to the secret, and that secret is that he’s trying to keep a certain person alive. And through the character I play, his past is such a dark one and the guilt of what he’s done weighs so heavy on him, that he sort of substitutes his real family for this other person in his mind, and he sort of looks at him as a brother in this way that’s a little too close for comfort. And what happens is he ends up forcing the action to take place against the other person’s will. So it becomes this thriller, this mindfuck of a movie of convincing this other guy to do something he doesn’t want to do."
As for the vibe of the film, "It’s very isolating, very claustrophobic. Even filming in it, it’s very claustrophobic. I remember reading the script and my manager and I were going through it and I was like, 'What do you think?,' and she was like, 'I love how claustrophobic it is; I hope they keep that element there,' and after talking with Christian multiple times before I came here, that was one of the main questions I kept asking: 'Can we keep it as claustrophobic as this?' As dire and as end of the world as the script reads right now, we’ve kept it all. It’s a very claustrophobic feel just shooting it. There are moments in it that are... they’re terrifying, and you feel very alone and you feel very fucked over on many different levels by other people and, you know, by the world as a whole, by the people that put us there. It has these sad elements to it, but it also has these uplifting storylines as well. One half is going down the rabbit hole, and the other half is climbing back up it."
Sounds right up our alley for sure so look for lots more soon!
