George Clooney Stars in First Trailer for Netflix Space Epic The Midnight Sky

Netflix has dropped the first trailer for another major feature film they’ve had sitting in their back pocket for a while now—spacefaring sci-fi epic The Midnight Sky. Filmed in the months immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the film both stars and was directed by George Clooney. To quote the short, official premise:

This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine (George Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.

Which is to say: Through some unknown event, all human life on Earth appears to have been wiped out. The crew of an advanced spaceship were away while this was happening, but are now returning to Earth. Clooney, meanwhile, is in a “last man on Earth” situation, trapped in an arctic research station with a tiny, cute little girl who the internet immediately began to theorize must be a figment of his imagination. He decides it’s his duty to travel to a more powerful radio station so he can warn the incoming spaceship crew not to return to Earth—although it’s unclear how they would then be able to reroute themselves to some other hospitable world.

Regardless, The Midnight Sky features a fairly impressive ensemble cast, including Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir and Tiffany Boone. There are definite shades of Ad Astra, Interstellar and Gravity (which also had Clooney) here, as well as the suggestion that things could get pretty intense. In particular, there’s a very quick shot in the trailer of someone lifting off a space helmet and a splash of zero-G blood escaping with it, which feels like something we haven’t seen in one of these movies previously.

The Midnight Sky arrives on Netflix just before Christmas, on Dec. 23, 2020. Check out the full trailer below.