Oblivion gets a new title; female lead shortlist includes Olivia Wilde, Noomi Rapace, Brit Marling

Even though Joseph Kosinski floored me with his directorial debut, the streaky sci-fi sequel Tron: Legacy, I've found it hard to get into his follow-up. Perhaps it was the boring title, Oblivion. Or it's boring star, Tom Cruise, who I generally enjoy but am rarely blown away by. More likely it's the generic sounding premise, taking place on an Earth destroyed by alien attack, with Cruise playing Jack, a guy who returns to the surface to repair drones that protect the planet from further destruction. >yawn<  It's gonna take me a lot to warm up to this flick.

There have been a couple of steps in the right direction, though.  The first is that the title of the film has been changed to Horizons, which while still vague and a little dull, I like better than Oblivion for whatever reason. Maybe because it reminds me of Event Horizon. Who knows? 

The other is in the shortlist of contenders for the two major female roles, one as Jack's lover and right hand gal. The other as Jack's fiancee probably seen in flashback before the invasion.  The highly sought after Brit Marling(Another Earth), the omnipresent Olivia Wilde, Jessica Chastain(Tree of Life), Noomi Rapace(Prometheus), and Olga Kurylenko(Quantum of Solace) are said to be leading the pack. Cruise seems to have a thing for Marling, as he tried to get her to star in One-Shot also. All of these women are busy as hell, and fitting the film into their schedule could prove problematic. Kurylenko may be the easiest to get, although she has a couple of projects, including one of Terrence Malick's mystery flicks, upcoming. [Variety]