Earlier this week, an inaugural theatrical trailer provided a first look at Oblivion, a science-fiction adventure starring Tom Cruise.  That trailer supplied lots of slick visuals and built up a sense of mystery about the desolate, post-apocalyptic setting.  While he's not exactly spilling all the beans on Oblivion, director Joseph Kosinski is talking about the movie's story, influences, and style.

Director Joseph Kosinski made his feature debut with TRON: Legacy, a big science fiction movie for Disney two years ago.  Now, he's working on his sophomore feature, Oblivion, a big science fiction movie for Universal Pictures.  Brewing even before the TRON sequel's release, Oblivion is currently in production starring Tom Cruise as a futuristic solider who gets mixed up in some serious shit.  That's my summation of the story, but today Universal issued the first official plot synopsis for the movie, which is actually based on a comic book by Kosinski, Arvid Nelson, and Andree Wallin.

Morgan Freeman is a gravitas machine, capable of making anything seem hugely important or especially wise in his own easy way.  It doesn't matter if he's in classy picture like The Shawshank Redemption, unapologetic nonsense like Wanted, or a massive blockbuster like The Dark Knight, it's just what Freeman does.  And it's apparently what he'll be doing alongside Tom Cruise in the science fiction actioner Oblivion, as the Oscar winner has apparently joined the cast of the film, which has also been widely referred to as Horizons.

Horizons, director Joseph Kosinski's follow-up to his debut feature TRON: Legacy, has had a not-uneventful ride so far.  Before the TRON sequel hit theaters, Disney acquired the project, then titled Oblivion, in a heated bidding war.  In the middle of the design stage of pre-production, the studio decided that a big budget PG-13 science fiction actioner did not fit with their current strategy, so Kosinski shopped his would-be movie around and it pretty quickly landed at Universal Pictures.  Through pretty much the whole process, Tom Cruise has been on board to star, and now, with the project on the fast-track, Kosinski is testing actresses for the two lead female roles.  A shortlist of the actresses under consideration has emerged, and it includes no shortage of talented and beautiful women who might just share the screen with Cruise, along with a few salient details on the story and screenwriter.

A few weeks back, Disney basically said, "It's not you, it's me," to Joseph Kosinski's Horizons, formerly titled Oblivion, which it acquired in a heated bidding war last summer, well before Kosinski's feature directorial debut Tron Legacy hit theaters.  Since the House of Mickey and Kosinski are going to stay friends, though, Disney allowed to the director to see other studios and shop his ambitious science fiction project around town.  Well, it appears that Horizons may well have found a new squeeze at Universal Studios.