Disaster is set to strike in February, thanks to a brand new film from Lionsgate and director Roland Emmerich. Moonfall, which is quite literally about the moon crashing into Earth, is Emmerich’s next disaster flick in a long line of big budget disaster films, and it arrives in theaters on February 4, 2022. We’ve still got several weeks before Moonfall hits theaters, but Lionsgate is giving fans a small look at what’s to come when it does finally arrive.
Videos by ComicBook.com
On Monday, Lionsgate released the first five minutes of Moonfall online for all to enjoy. This opening scene, which you can check out below, sets up the entire story and introduces the two main characters, a pair of astronauts played by Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson. Take a look!
In the clip, a group of astronauts are working on a satellite out in space, when a mysterious material swarms by their workspace and destroys most of what it touches. While two of the three astronauts on the mission are able to survive the encounter, they see the material move from their location to the surface of the moon, eventually knocking it out of orbit and creating its eventual collision course with Earth.
Emmerich has made a career out of telling massive disaster stories, and Moonfall might be his biggest yet. The director struck gold with Independence Day in 1996 and followed up its success with a Godzilla remake just two years later. He also directed the likes of The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and Midway.
“It has a very, very similar tone to Independence Day,” Emmerich told ComicBook.com earlier this year. “And it’s, at first, you think it’s a disaster movie and then you realize, ‘Oh, my God, this is something much bigger than that.’ And I mean, obviously, like I said, the Moon is falling on the Earth, which is a bad thing. But on top of it, it’s not what we think it is, which makes it some sort of a thing, and there’s like an alien aspect of it.”
“And Moonfall is even like … a lot of people read the script. When they finally saw the script, they couldn’t believe it,” the director added. “They said, ‘Oh, my God. I never saw that. And it’s that big.’”
What do you think of Moonfall‘s opening scene? Are you excited for the movie to arrive next year? Let us know in the comments!
