Morgan Creek Productions has signed Keanu Reeves (The Matrix) as the male lead in a Sci-Fi film entitled Passengers, to be directed by Gabriele Muccino (Seven Pounds). The original script for the film was written by Jon Spaihts but is now getting a polish and will begin shooting next January.

THR reports that Passengers is set in the future and centers on Jim Preston (Reeves), a mechanic on a 120-year journey to a distant colonized planet in another galaxy, who becomes the first traveler to experience pod hibernation failure. Having woken up 100 years too soon, he is stranded in the world of an interstellar spaceship with only robots and androids for companionship.

A year into his journey, he decides to wake up a fellow passenger, a beautiful journalist named Aurora. They fall in love but must soon deal not only with the revelation of Jim’s misjudged act of waking her but a major malfunction of the ship itself.

Founder of Morgan Creek Productions and producer of the film, James Robinson said the film is essentially a love story but with sophisticated robotics, a crusty older character a la Tommy Lee Jones and a comic humanoid servant a la Eddie Izzard.

“I think of the picture as having the after-taste of ‘Titanic’ — but everyone lives.”