Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: The hot role for young actresses is in Universal’s Joseph Kosinski-directed Tom Cruise science fiction film Oblivion. Jessica Chastain already signed on for one of two plum roles, and I’m told the studio will read three actresses for the other female lead this weekend in Pittsburgh. That is where Cruise is shooting One Shot, playing Jack Reacher in the Christopher McQuarrie-directed adaptation of the Lee Child novel series.

Captain America‘s Hayley Atwell, Inglourious Basterds’ Diane Kruger, and Kate Beckinsale have made it to the lightning round to play a mysterious young woman who crash-lands on earth much to the shock of Cruise’s character, a soldier who is one of the last men on the planet in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the population lives in clouds above an earth surface that has been rendered uninhabitable. Cruise’s character is alone as he repairs the drones that patrol and destroy a savage alien life form, until he encounters a beautiful woman who crashes in a craft, and their experience together forces him to question his world view.

Universal committed to finance and distribute the $100 million film last April, after Disney let it go because it didn’t fit the family film mold. The script by William Monahan got a rewrite from Karl Gajdusek. Kosinski hatched the idea for the project and set it to be published by Barry Levine’s Radical Media graphic novel imprint as a calling card for a movie when Kosinski was busy for so long directing Tron: Legacy. Chernin Entertainment’s Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark are producing along with Levine.