Brad Pitt Eyed to Star in Jeff Nichols' ‘Land of Opportunity' [Update]

UPDATE: I have more details about this project. Apparently, Pitt has only read the script and is being sought to star in the lead role. This film is NOT the “Alien Nation” remake.

In the early 2010s, Nichols sold a script to HBO for the pilot episode of a TV series he wrote, “Land of Opportunity.” It’s said to be a “dystopian story” set in Arkansas, about a new Great Depression where oil has run out and the dollar has collapsed. However, HBO chose not to go ahead with the project and instead Nichols has now turned it into a feature length film.

EARLIER: Now that “The Bikeriders” is behind him, having arrived in theaters almost 10 months after it premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival, Jeff Nichols has seemingly set up his next film.

Daniel Richtman is reporting that Brad Pitt is set to star in Nichols’ untitled sci-fi film for Paramount, and that a summer 2025 shoot has been set up for the film in Arkansas. This is the project that Nichols has been teasing for well over a year now. He couldn’t totally get it off the ground, but Pitt’s sudden participation must have surely helped in finally getting it moving.

In a recent interview, Nichols was hinting at this “mysterious” sci-fi movie being up next for him. The film had been originally announced in 2021, with Paramount backing it up. I have my suspicions as to what this film might be, but firstly, here is Nichols describing the project:

I’d love for it [the sci-fi film] to be my next film. It says everything I want to say about humanity and the universe. It’s a big film. It’s got a big scope to it and a big heart to it. Believe it or not, it’s a film with aliens in it. But it takes place in Arkansas, and it feels like a movie made by the guy who made Mud, and it just happens to have aliens in it.

So, the sci-fi project he’s talking about might very well be a loose remake of the 1988 film “Alien Nation.” Nichols is so adamant in getting this one made that he’s already told The Irish Times it “will either happen or I’ll be on my deathbed thinking about how I can make it happen.”

In 2018, Nichols was supposed to direct “Alien Nation” in what was then described as “a big, $100 million studio film, set in Arkansas.” Problem is that Disney bought Fox and killed the project, which Nichols called a “soul-crushing” experience.

“Alien Nation” was then pitched as a 10-episode Disney+ series, but that idea was also scrapped. Nichols now, again, wants to turn it into a film, and technically speaking, there will be no rights issues here, I had been told that Nichols would be able to make the film at Paramount because his script is an original story and only “inspired” by the Disney-owned “Alien Nation”. The characters’ names are different and so is the plot.

Last year, I reported that Nichols’ long-gestating loosely-based-on remake was further along in development than originally thought. So much so that an Arkansas-set shoot was planned for the fall. Sadly, the strikes occurred soon after that.

Meanwhile, with Quentin Tarantino having canceled “The Movie Critic,” Pitt’s schedule seems to have freed up some space for that Summer 2025 shoot to occur. He just needs to complete his participation in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” which has been shooting for well over a year and should be wrapping things up soon.

Nichols is the director of “Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter,” “Mud,” and “Loving,” and he surely deserves the opportunity to make or direct anything he pleases. He’s delved in the sci-fi genre once in his carer— 2017’s “Midnight Special” was a pure and total Spielberg-inspired exercise.