20th Century Studios has released a new special look at The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott’s upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin and Margaret Qualley.
Elordi plays Hig, a young pilot trying to survive in a brutal world where civilisation as he knew it has largely disappeared.
Together with Bangley, a hardened military survivalist played by Josh Brolin, Hig has created an isolated but carefully organised home designed to keep the dangers of the outside world at a distance.
It works.
But survival alone is beginning to feel like something less than living.
The new footage places that conflict at the centre of the film. Bangley approaches their world through caution, weapons and strict survival instincts, while Hig continues to believe that humanity — and perhaps even a better life — may still exist somewhere beyond their protected territory.
Everything changes when Hig receives a mysterious radio transmission.
The signal suggests that other people may be alive somewhere beyond the boundaries he and Bangley have established.
For Hig, it represents something almost impossible to ignore: hope.
Leaving safety behind, he takes to the air and ventures into a world where every encounter could lead either to the human connection he desperately wants or to another reason why Bangley was right not to trust anyone.
The special look expands on the central contrast driving Ridley Scott’s film.
This is a survival story filled with danger, isolation and the remnants of a collapsed society, but its central question is not simply whether Hig can stay alive.
It is whether surviving still matters if fear forces people to abandon everything that made them human in the first place.
Margaret Qualley joins Elordi and Brolin in the ensemble alongside Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong and Allison Janney.
The film is based on Peter Heller’s acclaimed novel The Dog Stars and was adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith.
Smith previously collaborated with Alejandro G. Iñárritu on The Revenant, another survival story centred on a character attempting to endure an unforgiving wilderness, while Ridley Scott brings decades of large-scale filmmaking experience to the project.
For Scott, the post-apocalyptic setting offers an opportunity to combine spectacle with a much more intimate story about loneliness, grief and the difficult decision to trust other people after the world has given you every reason not to.
The special look repeatedly returns to Hig’s refusal to surrender that belief.
Bangley has learned how to survive the end of civilisation.
Hig wants to know whether there is still something beyond survival.
And one unexpected voice on a radio may be enough to send him searching for the answer.
The Dog Stars arrives exclusively in cinemas on August 28, 2026.
Watch the new special look below.
