According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lars von Trier (Antichrist) has finished casting on his disaster movie Melancholia, with John Hurt joining the project.

This $7.5 million production starts shooting July 19 in Trollhattan, Sweden.

Peter A. Jensen, the head of von Trier's production company, Zentropa, calls Melancholia a "beautiful film about the end of the world," but he would not disclose any plot points. All he would offer was that the story was set around a "large object from outer space approaching Earth that affects the planet's inhabitants."