George Clooney warned the world that “I don’t look so good” in his upcoming Netfilx movie (and his first movie since 2016’s forgettable Money Monster), The Midnight Sky, and yep, there’s a reason that he tried to prepare us for his appearance. Clooney plays a cancer-afflicted, lonely scientist in the Arctic who’s also struggling to survive on post-apocalyptic Earth. (That’s rough stuff.) Not only that, but he’s fighting to stop a group of astronauts from returning home following an apocalyptic event. (That’s dark stuff.) So, he’s allowed to look a little less movie-star-ish than usual, right?
Cue the David Letterman beard as Clooney also makes his Netflix debut as director in this adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel, Good Morning, Midnight. The screenplay hails from The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith, and Clooney previously told Vanity Fair that he drew upon his space-movie-making experiences in Gravity while getting his mindset in gear for this film. So, The Revenant + Gravity? That sounds epic, Oscar-y, and like a different kind of late-December movie than we’re used to from Netflix (Bright, Bird Box, 6 Underground). Let’s hope we don’t see any angry (polar) bears entering the equation.
The Midnight Sky co-stars Felicity Jones as a character named Sully, along with David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Caoilinn Springall, and Tiffany Boone. The film streams on December 23.