The Halo director’s next film is Romeo and Juliet set on the Moon in 2060
Roel Reiné is directing from a script inspired by NASA's Artemis programme, with cameras due to roll in 2027.
If you're looking for that sweet spot where space colonies meet star-crossed lovers, let me point you at a freshly announced sci-fi romance: Lunar Colony. It's not every day a guy who directed Halo takes a swing at a Romeo and Juliet riff set on the Moon, but that's precisely what Roel Reiné is up to next.
High Stakes on the Moon
The premise is pure 2060 melodrama: decades after humanity's managed to put permanent boots (and presumably overpriced coffee shops) on the Moon, the resource relationship between Earth and its lunar offspring gets testy. Tensions flare, political lines get drawn, and right in the middle you have two love-struck young people — Tiara and Josh — trying to dodge the fallout. One's from Earth, the other was raised on the Moon. Their romance lands them smack in the crosshairs of political power struggles and family pressure, which, if you know Shakespeare, sounds about right.
Production for Lunar Colony is targeting a 2027 start, with main roles currently being cast.
The script, from Cerise Fukuji, is inspired by NASA's Artemis programme — which is both a savvy bit of near-futurism and probably going to lead to at least one argument about orbital mechanics on set. Patricia A. Beninati is producing and, in what is possibly the least subtle pitch ever, called it "a classic romance in the vein of Romeo and Juliet."
Development duties are shared by Centerboro Productions, Sintered Steel Productions, and Convoke Media, so expect plenty of behind-the-scenes industry handoffs before anyone gets to say, "It's a wrap."
Who's Roel Reiné, Then?
Let's talk about the director, because his filmography is a patchwork of cult TV and treat-for-streaming sequels. If you clocked the tone of Halo (he directed two episodes in Season 1), you already know Reiné likes his near-future with a side order of heavy. He's also directed instalments of Marvel's Inhumans, Black Sails, Knightfall, Wu Assassins, Colosseum, and Ancient Empires.
- On the movie front: Death Race 2, The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, Hard Target 2, The Condemned 2, Fistful of Vengeance, Classified, and Line of Fire.
And if you're thinking he never gets any critical love — not quite true. Back in the Netherlands he nabbed the country's top directing prize for The Delivery. Clearly, the man knows his way around a camera, whether it's dystopian wastelands or B-movie smackdowns.
Reiné himself has described Lunar Colony as another entry in his personal run at futuristic worlds, but he’s keen to stick the emotional landing. As he put it while talking up the project's appeal:
Underneath the scale of the science fiction, it is a deeply human story about freedom, love and the world we choose to leave behind.
Casting's underway right now, with cameras expected to roll in 2027. It's early days, but if you're after a bit of lunar heartache fused with political intrigue and speculative fiction, Lunar Colony might just land in your watchlist.