The star's latest sci-fi film is set to prove he's more than just a comedic legend
Adam Sandler is set to remind us he's more than an esteemed comedy performer with his latest Netflix offering. The actor has produced and starred in a number of films on the streaming giant, including the Murder Mystery duology featuring Jennifer Aniston.
Now, Sandler portrays a Czech astronaut on a mission of a lifetime in the upcoming movie Spaceman. Having spent six months alone in the cosmos, Jakub realises his marriage back on earth is doomed.
He finds solace in a mysterious creature hiding in the bowels of his ship named Hanuš. Scrambling to save his relationship, the large, spider-like being helps Jakub make sense of what went wrong before it's too late.
Based on the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař, it stars Carey Mulligan as Jakub's wife Lenka while Paul Dano voices Hanuš. Jonah Renck - whose previous work includes Chernobyl and Breaking Bad - serves as director.
On Sandler taking on a more serious role in Spaceman, Renck told Netflix: “I don’t think people understand how [although] he may come across as funny and sweet and all that, he’s very intelligent, really smart, profound.”
The original book first began as a short story jotted down in Kalfař's final year of college. The author told Netflix: "Originally, it was just a punch line about an American astronaut who was stranded in orbit when he received a call from his wife asking for a divorce.”
But as he expanded it into a full-length novel, the story grew larger and larger, eventually becoming a tale of love, space, time, and the author’s own Czech family.
Spaceman releases on Friday, March 1 on the streaming giant. It will be available to watch from 8am here in the UK.
Joining Sandler, Dano and Mulligan for this emotional space escapade is Kunal Nayyar as technician Peter, and Isabella Rossellini as Commissioner Tuma, Jakub’s commanding officer.
Netflix told of how Sandler took an interest in Kalfař’s heritage as he prepared to play a Czech astronaut. “During the quarantine, we had all these late nights, two-hour conversations about the character and about the book,” Kalfař said. “And he was so curious about what it is to be Czech and the Czech history.”
On the logistics of setting most of a film in a zero-gravity spacecraft, Sandler spent much of his time on set dangling from wires. Director Renck said: “It’s tremendously uncomfortable with all these harnesses and hanging in your own body weight. I think it’s painful in a way that’s actually going to be intrusive to your performance — unless you’re Adam, because he just pushed through that in an incredible way.”