With movies like Punch-Drunk Love, Hustle, and Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler has shown that he can entertain audiences with much more formidable acting chops than those viewers might have assumed he possessed. And with his upcoming Netflix movie Spaceman, in which he plays a lost and haunted astronaut, he’s about to do it again.
The story finds Sandler’s astronaut, Jakub, sent to the edge of the galaxy to collect mysterious ancient dust — but while he’s out there among the stars, probing the hidden truths of the cosmos, his life back on Earth is falling apart. He desperately wants to patch things up with his wife (played by Carey Mulligan), so Jakub turns to an unusual source for help: A creature from the beginning of time found hiding in the bowels of his ship.
The movie, which hits the streamer on March 1, is based on the novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař, and in addition to Sandler and Mulligan, the cast includes Kunal Nayyar as a technician named Peter, Isabella Rossellini as Jakub’s commanding officer, and Paul Dano as the voice of Hanuš, the ancient creature.
“Spaceman began as a short story that I wrote in my last year of college,” Kalfař said in a Netflix promotional interview. “Originally, it was just a punch line about an American astronaut who was stranded in orbit when he received a call from his wife asking for a divorce.” From there, though, it grew into a story about love, time, and space — as well as Kalfař’s own Czech family.
For me, it’s also incredibly exciting that the director here is Johan Renck, who you might remember also directed HBO’s fantastic limited series Chernobyl. “I really wanted to have a performance from him that had nothing to do with the Adam Sandler we all know,” Renck told Netflix. “I don’t think people understand how (although) he may come across as funny and sweet and all that, he’s very intelligent, really smart, profound.”
Spaceman will definitely give him a chance to display those qualities, and then some. Check out the official first look teaser below:
