Netflix’s Saturn Return: Charles Melton, Rachel Brosnahan & Will Poulter Set to Star In New Movie

Don’t be fooled by its sci-fi-reminiscent title. Saturn Return promises to be a grounded and deeply humanistic film. Set in Chicago during an indeterminate era, it will tell a romantic tale that chronicles the life experiences of one character (or perhaps multiple characters) over the course of a decade, from one’s idealistic college years into the practical complexities of maturity. This project certainly smacks of arthouse fare, and the names attached to Saturn Return should likewise excite all movie fans of art-film persuasion.

Production Breakdown – What We Know

Saturn Return will be directed by Greg Kwedar, best known for directing and co-writing the 2023 prison drama Sing Sing. This film, which depicted a real-life theater group in the titular prison and featured several actors who had been personally involved in this program, earned Kwedar an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. The screenplay for Saturn Return has already been written by Gaelyn Golde and revised by Kwedar and his Sing Sing scriptwriting collaborator, Clint Bentley.

The producer of Saturn Return will be Plan B Entertainment, the company owned by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Brad Pitt. Plan B was founded in 2001 and counts among its past productions many Oscar-winning and nominated films, including Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk. The project has been picked up for distribution by Netflix.

An Accomplished Acting Trio Attached

Thus far, three actors have been announced to star in Saturn Return, and they’re an accomplished trio: Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Rachel Brosnahan.

Brosnahan (most recently seen this year as Lois Lane in James Gunn’s Superman) is notable for her roles in several thrillers, both in film and television, including Netflix’s House of Cards series (for which she received an Emmy nomination) and the 2025 action film The Amateur. She also won an Emmy Award for her leading role in the Amazon Prime period dramedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Charles Melton has already firmly established both his romantic and his dramatic chops onscreen, thanks respectively to his lead role in 2019’s The Sun Is Also a Star and to his portrayal of a childhood rape victim now married to his victimizer in 2023’s May December, which earned him widespread acclaim and a Golden Globe Award nomination.

This will not be the first time that Melton has shared the screen with Will Poulter: the two of them both had starring roles in this year’s war drama Warfare, in which they portrayed soldiers of separate platoons fighting in the Iraq War. Poulter has also held prominent roles in The Revenant and Midsommar.