Ridley Scott, Paul Mescal Reteam for ‘The Dog Stars’

Ridley Scott and Paul Mescal are set to reteam for The Dog Stars thriller after their collaboration on Gladiator II.

Mescal is in advanced talks to star in Scott’s next film, which is expected to shoot in 2025 after he completes work on an untitled Bee Gees movie at Paramount. The Dog Stars will have Scott working with Steve Asbell and 20th Century Studios.

The project, based on the Peter Heller 2012 Apocalyptic thriller that Mark L Smith is adapting, is set in a near future where an unnamed pandemic has decimated American society. However, a civilian pilot lives a lonely life on an abandoned Colorado airbase with his dog and a tough ex-marine, according to a synopsis from the producers. The two men, though mismatched, depend on each other to fend off roaming invaders. And when a random transmission beams through the radio of the pilot’s 1956 Cessna, the hope of a better life opens up and the pilot follows its static-broken trail.

Smith, Cliff Roberts and Scott Free are producing The Dog Stars, which follows Scott’s Gladiator sequel. In Gladiator II, Mescal plays a grown-up Lucius Verus II, a nephew to emperor Commodus from the original film, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Lucius returns to Rome after being forced into slavery to battle not as a ruler, but as a gladiator out for revenge and power, and seeks to return the glory of Rome to its people.

Deadline was first to report on plans for The Dog Stars.