Filming wrapped for the sci-fi picture in February, when things were very different. “There wasn’t the pandemic, and we hadn’t set the whole West Coast on fire,” Clooney told Vanity Fair. “I mean, the picture we show of Earth [in the movie] doesn’t look that much different than the satellite pictures of the West Coast right now.”

“It’s science fiction,” he said of The Midnight Sky, “which unfortunately is less fictional as we move through the days.”

In promotional shots for the apocalyptic Netflix film, we also see Clooney rocking a scraggly gray beard. “I don’t look so good,” he said. “I’m not even 60 yet, but the character is 70. Unfortunately, I’m looking closer to that. I’ve always looked a little older, but now I really look like I am.”

A post shared by Vanity Fair (@vanityfair) on Sep 25, 2020 at 5:01am PDT

“I’d say I look like my father, but my father looks better than me,” he quipped.

Along with Clooney, the film stars Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Sophie Rundle (Gentleman Jack), Tiffany Boone (Little Fires Everywere), David Oyelowo (Selma), Demián Bichir (The Hateful Eight), and introduces Caoilinn Springall.

The actor-director told Vanity Fair about the similarities the film has to the world we live in in 2020. “The sickness of hate and the elements that come from that, battles and wars—that has been percolating for quite some time,” Clooney remarked. “There’s the sadness [in the film] of what man is capable of doing to man and how easily it can just be taken away.”

He also likened the space drama to Gravity and The Revenant. “And they’re not natural fits, so it was a constant balancing act.” Clooney previously starred in Gravity, and The Revenant’s screenwriter Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay for The Midnight Sky.

As per IMDb, “This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine, a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully [Jones] and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.”

The Midnight Sky is slated to premiere sometime in December on Netflix.