In Roland Emmerich's Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling on a collision course for Earth. With the world on the brink of annihilation, it's down to three unlikely heroes to mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space to make things right. However, it's then they find out that our moon isn't quite what we think it is.
Emmerich is no stranger to disaster movies, of course, and he's destroyed his fair share of landmarks in the likes of Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow.
Moonfall takes the filmmaker into outer space, though not for real. Visual effects are used to transport Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, and John Bradley to the moon, but with various productions looking to legitimately travel high above Earth's atmosphere, could that be next for Emmerich?
"Well, I’m constantly discussing with myself as a person if I should go into space or not [Laughs] and if I kind of risk it," he told us in the video above when we asked if he'd shoot a movie in space. "Today, you can do pretty much everything in CGI. I have the feeling it’s...when you see Star Wars or any one of these movies, it looks so believable now."
Tom Cruise looks set to be the first leading man in Hollywood to boldly go where no actor has gone before, and the expectation is that his trip into space will make that the norm for blockbusters. There's even been chatter of a production studio being established high above Earth, and it's exciting to think what an action director like Emmerich could do behind the camera miles above our heads!
It's certainly going to be an interesting few years for these space-set movies, especially when the likes of Moonfall and Avatar show that the same impact can be made on Earth courtesy of VFX!
Moonfall is set to be released exclusively in theaters on February 4.