After an exhaustive search of some of Hollywood’s most gorgeous and talented women, Jessica Chastain (The Help) has won one of two female leads in the writer/director Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy) pic, Horizons.  Formerly known as Oblivion, Horizons features two female leads: a mysterious traveler and the wife of the protagonist.  It’s not yet clear which role Chastain is negotiating for, but it is being reported that one of the above-mentioned actresses may land the remaining lead.

Horizons also stars Tom Cruise as a veteran soldier who gets court-martialed (probably for buzzing the tower) and sent to the surface of the uninhabitable Earth which has been destroyed by an alien race.  At some point, Cruise’s character discovers a woman who crash lands in a pod, which catalyzes his questioning of his lot in life. Hit the jump for more on Horizons.

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The casting news comes by way of Variety, but brings with it some confusion.  The history of Horizons/Oblivion is a little cloudy in its own right, as it was picked up Disney after the success of Kosinski’s TRON: Legacy, then promptly dropped and scooped up again by Universal. Kosinski’s graphic novel, of which Horizons is based on, was originally billed as “set on a future Earth, where civilization lives above the clouds and scavengers collect ancient artifacts from the polluted surface below.  When one young scavenger finds a crashed spacecraft planetside, it lead him on a journey filled with romance and adventure;” and then later, vaguely described as “a soldier assigned to patrol a desolate planet who meets a mysterious traveler.”

With the vagaries of the project’s studio, title, plot and leading roles in flux, it’s difficult for me to get amped up for it just yet.  However, things should start to gel soon as production is slated to start this winter, with a release date of July 19th, 2013.