Oscar Isaac Joins ‘Ex Machina’ Director’s New Movie, ‘Annihilation,’ Based On A Book Without Men

Even in a year stuffed with great science fiction, Alex Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina stood out for its hard sci-fi, near future verisimilitude and one fantastic GIF of Oscar Isaac dancing with a sexbot. Garland’s next movie, an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation, is far more ambitious than his AI parable. On Tuesday The Tracking Board reported that Issac would be along for the ride, which is strange, since Annihilation is a book without men.

The first novel in a trilogy, Annihilation follows four women on an expedition into Area X, an uninhabited zone on the East Coast where nature has turned alien. Unknown animals moan in the undergrowth, underground tunnels are choked with non-human writing and a mysterious monster continuously swamps a light house, leaving behind a pile of previous expedition journals. It doesn’t help that the Southern Reach organization that sent the anthropologist, the surveyor, the biologist and the psychologist is nearly as mysterious as the zone itself.

The four members of the expedition in Garland’s movie adaptation of Annihilation will be played by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson.

So if Annihilation doesn’t have any men, what’s Isaac’s role? If the movie version hews closely to the novel, then Isaac will play the biologist’s husband, who disappeared with the previous expedition into Area X. That means his role will mostly be in flashback, photos and a journal entry or two.

The other possibility is that Annihilation will fold in some elements from the sequel, Authority , in which case Isaac could play John Rodriguez, director of the Southern Reach agency that’s been sending expeditions into Area X.

Whoever Isaac ends up playing in Authority , it’s likely to be a small role. Still, with this movie’s pedigree, it’s bound to be memorable. Annihilation is already the most exciting science fiction release of 2017 and Isaac is just one more reason.