Everything We Know About ‘Spaceman,’ In Which Adam Sandler Will Befriend an Extraterrestrial Spider

Uncut Gems, Hustle, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Adam Sandler is on a late career hot streak that shows little sign of ending. Next up for the Sandlernaissance is Spaceman, a new Netflix collab which will adapt the 2017 Czech novel Spaceman of Bohemia, which imagines a trip to Venus from the perspective of Jakub Procházka, the Czech Republic’s (fictional) first independent astronaut.

Sandler will portray Procházka, which hopefully won’t involve a questionable accent; looking at the cast and crew around Sandler, we’ll bet on this one being a hit. Swedish director Johan Renck, best known for his work on the hit HBO miniseries Chernobyl, takes up duties behind the camera. And on that cast: it’s Paul Dano! And Carey Mulligan! This is how you win (Oscars)!

Here’s everything we know about Spaceman.

In Spaceman, Adam Sandler will befriend

(checks notes) a giant alien spider

You read that right. In the original book, a lonely Jakub strikes up an unlikely friendship with an extraterrestrial being who takes up residence on his ship. It takes the appearance of a giant spider — though (hopefully) a benevolent one, unlike Pennywise in It.

This tallies up with the official synopsis provided by Netflix:

As an astronaut sent to the edge of the gallery to collect mysterious ancient dust finds his earthly life falling to pieces, he turns to the only voice who can help him try to put it back together. It just so happens to belong to a creature from the beginning of time lurking in the shadows of his ship.

Arthouse fave Dano — best known for playing the histrionic snake oil salesman Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood, and more recently starring as a Zodiac-esque Riddler in The Batman — will voice the alien arachnid.

…otherwise, it sounds surprisingly moving

A lot of space movies in recent years have used the genre to explore the human struggles of star-faring: years-long missions, profound loneliness, Earthbound families left to wait with bated breath, etc.