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Currently making the transition from child actor to teen actor – presumably with the hopes of becoming a fully-realised adult actor – Asa Butterfield has another project to assist on his career path. Per THR, the Hugo star has now bagged the lead role in Relativity’s sci-fi effort, Out Of This World.

The rising star will be directed by Peter Chelsom (Hector and the Search for Happiness), who himself will be working from revisions he and Tinker Linsday made to Allan Loeb’s (Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps) original script. As the film is in the early stages, Butterfield is the only cast member confirmed. He will be playing a young teen who discovers that the opportunity to know his real father may still be in his grasp.

Check out the plot summary below:

The story is set in motion when, during a mission to colonize Mars led by a billionaire entrepreneur, a female astronaut is found to be pregnant. After she dies during childbirth, her son is raised in secrecy on Mars. Sixteen years later, with the guidance of a mission specialist, the teen (Butterfield) connects with a young woman he’s been communicating with and embarks on a road trip across America in hopes of finding the father he never knew.

The premise possesses a thematic depth (argh, my dad’s alive…. on another planet!) that could potentially give Butterfield another meaty role to sink his teeth into. His last big endeavour was 2013’s Ender’s Game, the Orson Scott Card adaptation. While that sci-fi caper left many feeling cold, Butterfield’s performance was utterly compelling as the troubled boy wonder. But, before we see him on the red planet, he’ll next be entering the magical world of Tim Burton in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Producing Out Of This World are Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh and Richard B. Lewis of Southpaw Entertainment, with Tucker Tooley, Loeb, Steven Pearl and Sasha Harari all attached to executive produce.