The Dog Stars

Ridley Scott returns to post-apocalyptic territory for the first time since producing The Road, adapting Peter Heller's acclaimed 2012 novel with a script by Mark L. Smith, who wrote The Revenant. The film follows Hig (Jacob Elordi), a pilot living in a Colorado hangar with his dog Jasper, scraping by in a world emptied by pandemic. His only neighbor is Bangley (Josh Brolin), a paranoid survivalist who handles ground defense while Hig scouts from the air. The uneasy partnership cracks when Hig picks up a woman's voice on the radio, a signal that might mean there's still something worth finding out there.

Scott shot the film primarily in Colorado, with additional aerial sequences in New Mexico and Utah. Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, who worked with Scott on The Last Duel and House of Gucci, captures the vast, empty landscapes in a palette that shifts from muted grays to the warm gold of the hidden valley. Harry Gregson-Williams provides the score, blending intimate acoustic guitar with swelling orchestral cues. Elordi earned his private pilot's license during pre-production, flying the Cessna 182 seen in the film himself for several sequences.

The cast includes Margaret Qualley as Cima, the voice on the radio, and Guy Pearce as Pops, the leader of a remote community. Allison Janney and Benedict Wong appear in undisclosed roles. With a budget of $110 million, the film balances survival action with quiet character beats, exploring what it means to choose hope when safety demands isolation. The Dog Stars arrives in theaters on August 26, 2026, positioned as a late-summer blockbuster with serious dramatic ambitions.[edit]

Hig wakes before dawn in his airplane hangar, the same routine he has followed for years. He checks on his dog Jasper, fuels the Cessna 182, and takes off to survey the surrounding territory. From above, the world looks empty, abandoned farms, rusting cars on highways, the occasional plume of smoke from a scavenger camp. Bangley, a former military man who lives in a fortified house a quarter mile away, handles anyone who gets too close. Their arrangement works: Hig provides eyes in the sky, Bangley provides firepower on the ground. Neither trusts the other completely, but survival doesn't require trust.

One afternoon, while flying farther than usual, Hig hears something on the radio. A woman's voice, singing. It cuts through the static for a few seconds, then vanishes. He circles the area, scans the frequencies, but finds nothing. Back at the hangar, he tells Bangley, who dismisses it as a trap or wishful thinking. The scavengers have used recorded voices before to lure people. But Hig can't shake the sound. It reminds him of his wife, who died in the early days of the pandemic, and of the world before everything collapsed.

The film intercuts Hig's present with flashbacks: his life as a commercial pilot, meeting his wife at an airport bar, the sudden news reports of a mysterious illness, the chaos of society's last weeks. These memories give weight to his loneliness. He talks to Jasper constantly, narrating his thoughts, apologizing for not being able to give the dog a better life. Bangley, meanwhile, prepares for a long winter, stockpiling ammunition and reinforcing his perimeter. He warns Hig that the signal came from the mountains, where the scavengers are thickest and the weather turns deadly.

Hig begins secretly planning a trip. He maps a route, calculates fuel, packs supplies. The radio crackles again a few nights later, the same voice, this time clearer. She is singing a folk song, one his wife used to hum. He decides to go. Bangley tries to stop him, arguing that leaving the safety of their territory is suicide. Hig tells him he would rather die looking for something than live with nothing. The morning of his departure, Bangley hands him a rifle and says nothing. Hig loads Jasper into the plane and takes off, heading toward the mountains. The flight is turbulent, the landscape below growing more rugged. Fuel runs low. He spots a valley, green and untouched, and descends through a break in the clouds. The story stops here, before he lands.[edit]