Under Pressure
VOYAGERS I Teens take to the stars for a sci-fi spin on Lord Of The Flies…
Some scripts are time capsules. Others, like the screenplay for Neil Burger’s Voyagers, only become more relevant as the years go by. “I was worried that maybe it was a little beyond its expiration date,” confides Burger (Limitless, Divergent), who first penned the script for Voyagers over a decade ago. “But right now, with issues of confinement, and leaders invoking fear to get their followers to do irrational, immoral things… that all suddenly felt very of the moment.”
Set in the year 2063, Voyagers unfolds aboard the Humanitas – a deep-space exploration vessel on a multi-generational mission across the cosmos to a new home planet. On board is a solitary adult – Colin Farrell’s altruistic Richard – and 30 teenagers bred for a single purpose: to reproduce, so that their children, and childrens’ children, may survive the 86-year journey, and secure humanity’s future.
For Christopher (Tye Sheridan), Sela (Lily-Rose Depp), Zac (Fionn Whitehead) and the rest of the voyagers, their purpose couldn’t be more noble. But there’s a cruelty to the fact that most will never live to see their new
home. “It’s about planting a seed for a tree that you’re never going to see bear fruit,” explains Burger, who again sees contemporary relevance. “We could all say: nothing’s going to happen in our lifetime [due to climate change]. We could push it down the line. But you owe it to future generations not to do that.”
A cocktail of depressants known as ‘the blue’ keeps the cooped-up crew of horny teens in check. But when Christopher and Zac realise they’re being drugged, they start skipping their morning dose, and succumbing to their base instincts. “I always thought of it like a submarine movie,” says Burger, who cites Das Boot as a touchstone, alongside Lord Of The Flies. “It’s human nature in a vacuum. They’re under the microscope.”
Shot on massive soundstages in Romania in 2019, the biggest challenge for Burger was wrangling 30 young actors with spunk to spare. “It’s not always easy... herding cats, as they say!” Burger chuckles. “Really, the most difficult thing was taking that youthful vitality out of them for the beginning of the movie. We actually did quite a bit of work on that.”
As with Limitless, which made the leap to TV in 2015, Burger already has an “outline” for a Voyagers sequel series focusing on the next generation, while production is currently under way on his next feature: an adaptation of The Marsh King’s Daughter starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn. “It differs from the book, but it still has a poetic quality going into this woman’s character, and into her conflict with how she feels about her father, and how she feels about the wilderness, where she was raised. It’s quite beautiful in that way.” JF
ETA | 2 JULY / VOYAGERS OPENS IN CINEMAS THIS SUMMER.