Ridley Scott and Jacob Elordi team up for The Dog Stars, a post-apocalyptic thriller where a pilot and his dog search for hope after a pandemic. Watch the trailer.
Ridley Scott looked at the apocalypse genre and decided what it really needed was a dog. The Dog Stars drops Jacob Elordi into a pandemic-ravaged wilderness with a co-pilot who cannot speak and absolutely steals every scene.
The film is based on Peter Heller’s 2012 bestseller and follows Hig, a pilot played by Elordi, who survives a deadly flu that wiped out humanity alongside his fiercely practical survivalist partner Bangley, played by Josh Brolin. When a mysterious radio transmission crackles through his Cessna’s receiver, Hig risks everything to find its source, dragging his loyal dog and his own grief along for the ride. Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay, and Scott directs for 20th Century Studios with a release date locked for August 28, 2026.
The Dog Stars Casting Twist Nobody Saw Coming
The genuinely wild part that got buried in the casting news is this: Paul Mescal was originally supposed to play Hig, reuniting with Scott after Gladiator II, but he had to drop out to film Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopic. Enter Jacob Elordi, who stepped in so last-minute that the CinemaCon trailer reveal in April still felt like a flex. The production shot across New Zealand’s South Island, utilizing locations like Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu, Glenorchy, and Milford Sound, which means the apocalypse has never looked more gorgeous. Margaret Qualley plays Hig’s wife in flashbacks, Guy Pearce and Benedict Wong round out the cast, and Allison Janney appears in a role that the trailer suggests involves significant menace.
What makes The Dog Stars genuinely surprising is how it uses its canine co-star. This isn’t a cute accessory; the dog is the emotional anchor. When Brolin’s Bangley asks Hig what he did before the world ended, Elordi’s reply—”I was kissing my wife, playing with my dog, wondering every day how I got so lucky”—lands like a gut punch because we already know both the wife and the world are gone. The only thing left is the dog, and that furry survivor becomes the reason Hig doesn’t just eat a bullet and call it a day. It’s like The Road if Viggo Mortensen had a Cessna and better cheekbones.
When was the last time a blockbuster let its hero be this openly heartbroken?
August 28 is the date to circle. The Dog Stars is positioning itself as the rare studio film that trusts audiences to sit with sorrow instead of drowning it in explosions. If Scott can make us cry over a man and his dog in a world that ended with a cough, he will have delivered the kind of mid-budget adult thriller that Hollywood claims it cannot make anymore.
Also Read: Ryan Gosling Killer Alien Buddy