Midnight Special – previously known as the Untitled Jeff Nichols Sci-Fi Project – is starting to take shape.  Nichols, the filmmaker behind the 2011 indie apocalypse drama Take Shelter (which won the coveted Critics Week Grand Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival) and this years crossover hit Mud, is moving to bigger terrain with this Warner Bros. backed science fiction film.  Already confirmed to the cast is Nichols regular Michael Shannon (currently the Big Bad in Man of Steel) and Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby, Warrior) and now comes word that Kirsten Dunst may join as well.

Midnight Special, which Nichols as also scripting, tells the story of a father and son who are forced to go on the run due to some sort of supernatural abilities the kid begins to exhibit.  Shannon will portray the father, but little else is known about the story or the roles Edgerton or Dunst may play.

Dunst, after years on the blockbuster circuit due to her Mary Jane Watson role in the first Spider-Man trilogy has recently been going the indie route.  Following her much acclaimed performance in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (for which she earned the 2011 Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival), she’s been seen in small-scaled films like Bachelorette, Upside Down, On the Road and the forthcoming The Two Faces of January, a period adaptation of the novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) opposite Viggo Mortensen.  She is also rumored to cameo in Anchorman: The Legend Continues, due this Christmas.