J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot’s God Particle is picking up some steam, and following last year’s recruitment of newcomer Julius Onah to direct the long-developing sci-fi thriller, the project has found a pair of impressive actors. Selma’s David Oyelowo and Beyond the Lights star Gugu Mbatha-Raw will play the lead roles in God Particle, which will finally begin shooting sometime this year for a 2017 release.

Variety reports on Oyelowo and Mbatha-Raw’s casting in God Particle, which centers on a team of astronauts on an American space station who believe they’ve unwittingly destroyed Earth by activating a Hadron accelerator. Seemingly isolated indefinitely in space, they encounter a foreign crew and invite them aboard with dangerous results.

The screenplay was recently rewritten by Doug Jung, who co-wrote the Bad Robot-produced Star Trek Beyond with Simon Pegg. That script revision coupled with the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane (which also underwent some creative rejiggering) and Abrams’ recent comments about further exploring that universe with a third film have led some to speculate that God Particle might be getting the Cloverfield treatment.

Whatever the case may be, with that plot description and that cast, God Particle sounds pretty exciting, and we have until February 24, 2017 to speculate about what it is — or isn’t.

Oyelowo is best known for his role in Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and appears next opposite Rosamund Pike in A United Kingdom, and with Lupita Nyong’o in Queen of Katwe. Mbatha-Raw broke out with roles in Belle and Beyond the Lights, and stars opposite Matthew McConaughey in the upcoming Civil War drama Free State of Jones. She’s also lending her voice talents to Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast.

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