As announced today by the prestigious Variety, Megan Fox, best known for her roles in Transformers, Jennifer’s Body and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will star in the SF thriller Aurora, directed by Serbian director and visual artist, Lazar Bodroža. Archlight, the sales agent for Bodroža’s notable feature film debut, AI Rising, will begin selling the rights to distribute Aurora in Berlin these days at the European Film Market.
According to a statement from Archlight, Aurora is the story of an astronaut stationed in a far space that monitors solar storms that threaten the Earth. She discovers that the shockwaves of these solar storms are changing the course of time, forcing her into emotional and psychological struggles with her own past and present.
Archlight, led by Gary Hamilton, has joined forces with Jordan Gartner (producer of Spring Breakers and The Virgin Suicides) and Toby Gibson (work includes The Lego Movie franchise) to produce and fund the film. The screenplay was written by Pete Bridges, Toby Gibson and Stuart Willis (screenwriter for Restoration). Tim Peternel is the executive producer, and production is scheduled to begin in May in Serbia.
Bodroža’s first film, AI Rising, whose screenplay was written by Dimitrije Vojnov, based on the story by Zoran Nešković, was a story of an astronaut sent on a long intergalactic mission. During that flight, he falls in love with a female android who accompanies him on a mission, and begins to believe that a real person is inside the machine. It is a sophisticated, small-scale melodrama set in a sci-fi milieu of a near future in which the world is drastically different from ours today.
Lazar Bodroža has previously directed two short films – The Mountain Wreath (2006) and Uber-Life: An Interactive Movie (2010). Stoya, an American actress of Serbian descent best known for her roles in porn movies, but also as a respected social activist, feminist, and columnist (The New York Times, Guardian, Vice), stars in the film in her first non-pornographic role, alongside Sebastian Kavaca, the most popular Slovenian actor at the moment, who is increasingly appearing in significant roles in films and TV series across the post-Yugoslav region. The third role is interpreted by Maruđa Majer, a young Slovenian actress. The rest of the film crew consists of: editor Milena Z. Petrović, set designer Aljoša Spajić, costume designer Senka Kljakić and music author Nemanja Mosurović. The film, made in English, was produced by Aleksandar Protić and Jonathan English, respectively, by Mir Media Group and BALKANIC, Inc.