By Phil de Semlyen | Posted 20 Jul 2016

When you’re working on an international space station, you’re going to need help floating about in zero G and pushing all those important looking buttons. Jake Gyllenhaal’s astronaut in Life has just got exactly that, with two new cast members joining him in the Daniel Espinosa sci-fi.

Russian actress Olga Dykhovichnaya is a new name to us, but Ariyon Bakare will be familiar to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and BBC drama New Blood. Both will be getting their Tim Peake on as members of International Space Station crew, with Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson and Hiroyuki Sanada also aboard. Their roles are yet to be revealed.

The story sees the astronauts investigating a sample on Mars that may prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. "And," adds the synopsis, "that life proves more intelligent than ever expected". Yikes.

Reynolds’ Deadpool writers, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, are behind the screenplay of a science-fiction that sounds like a more straight-faced voyage into the unknown, potentially with a thriller-ish tenor.

The production has just got underway at London’s Shepperton Studios (what, they couldn’t go to Mars?), with March 24, 2017 earmarked for release.