Though the title leaves quite a bit to be desired, the casting for director Daniel Espinosa's sci-fi project Life is shaping up to be rather solid. Ryan Reynolds was previously announced as being in talks for a lead role in the film but now it looks like a scheduling conflict has forced the Deadpool star to take a smaller role in the supporting cast. Enter: Jake Gyllenhaal. To be clear, Gyllenhaal isn't replacing Reynolds in the picture, as was reported by some outlets earlier.
THR clarified that Gyllenhaal will now star as the male lead in Life opposite Rebecca Ferguson, with Reynolds in a supporting role. Ferguson, whose action-packed turn in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation turned a lot of heads in her direction, joined the film earlier this year. The story follows the crew of a space station that discovers a lifeform on Mars. When the lifeform turns out to be intelligent as well as dangerous, the lives of the crew are put in jeopardy and they're forced to make some difficult decisions. The script was written by Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.
The scheduling conflict in question comes with Reynold's next film, Jeff Wadlow's action comedy The Hitman's Bodyguard. Written by Tom O'Connor, the film also boasts Elodie Yung, Salma Hayek, Gary Oldman, and Samuel L. Jackson in the cast, though little is known about its plot just yet.
As for Gyllenhaal, he'll next star in Jean-Marc Vallee’s Demolition, which opens April 8th, and has the Tom Ford drama Nocturnal Animals, in which he stars opposite Amy Adams, opening this fall. He also stars in and will produce Lionsgate’s Boston Marathon bombing drama Stronger for David Gordon Green, and will play George Westinghouse in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's The Current War, opposite Benedict Cumberbatch's Thomas Edison. Currently (sorry), the latter film doesn't have a release date.
