Keanu Reeves has signed on as the male lead for Morgan Creek's latest project, Passengers, to be directed by Italian auteur Gabriele Muccino.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the female love interest is still being sought for what the producers short-handed as "Adam & Eve in Space." The film also will have a couple of comedic roles and set designs created by some of the wizards who worked on Avatar.

Set in the future, Passengers 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.

The original script was penned by screenplay by Jon Spaihts but is now getting a polish and will begin shooting next January, though exactly where is still unclear.

The film is essentially a love story but with sophisticated robotics, a crusty older character and a comic humanoid servant.

No production date has been set.