Brad Pitt And James Gray Take A Giant Leap With ‘Ad Astra'

Brad Pitt made the first move with James Gray.

In 1995, he saw Gray’s debut “Little Odessa” and decided to call up the young filmmaker behind the grim Brooklyn crime drama. They’ve been talking ever since — about films, life and working together. But it would take almost 25 years for the stars to finally align, fittingly, for an ambitious, original space odyssey called “Ad Astra” that opens in theaters nationwide Friday.

“It’s a gutsy film,” Pitt said last month. The 55-year-old both produced and stars in the story about an astronaut who ventures almost entirely alone into the outer reaches of space to investigate a disturbance that may be tied to his missing father. It’s something Gray had been working on for years.

Pitt’s choice of the word “gutsy” is appropriate, not just as a description of the film and its exploration of big themes like masculinity with the grand canvas of space as its backdrop, but in talking about the fact that it exists at all. Not many studios and production companies are handing over $80 million for original ideas anymore. That Pitt’s Plan B, New Regency, and 20th Century Fox banded together to make “Ad Astra” happen is, Gray said, “Beyond rare...It’s a big risk.”

Pitt, sitting next to his director, chimed in: “It’s why studios have veered away from them. They’re a big gamble: The cost, the prints, and advertising. It’s why they have to make safer bets.”