Director James Gray’s new film The Immigrant finally had its American premiere at the New York Film Festival last weekend, and now the filmmaker looks poised to make a major departure for his next feature. Gray recently told our partners at Omelete that his next project will be his long-gestating sci-fi thriller, now titled To the Stars. The story takes place in the near future and concerns an odyssey through the solar system. The pic revolves around a group of astronauts who go on a mission to bring a renegade colonist back to Earth. Hit the jump for more.

Gray co-wrote the script for To the Stars with Ethan Goss (Fringe) and plans to start production in mid-2014, with casting to be announced later this year. The We Own the Night director has been attaching himself to decidedly different material as of late, as he signed on to direct the big scale crime thriller White Devil for Warner Bros. a couple of months ago and is also attached to direct the “search for El Dorado” non-fiction adaptation The Lost City of Z.

It’s unclear whether To the Stars has a studio attached just yet, but Gray seems confident that the project will get off the ground next year; the box office success of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity can’t hurt. The director’s latest film, The Immigrant, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and revolves around prostitution in New York City in 1921. Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Renner star, and you can read Matt’s review from NYFF here.