Filming Netflix's Spaceman Had Adam Sandler In Some Very Real Pain

We love Adam "The Sandman" Sandler, don't we, folks? Sandler has been a staple of the screen for decades now, and while he tends to gravitate towards comedy, every now and then he'll turn out a dramatic role to remind us that he's actually a pretty good actor. Sandler's latest serious part is in the upcoming Netflix film "Spaceman," where he plays a very sad astronaut going through a breakup with his pregnant wife, played by Carey Mulligan. What's a sad spaceman to do? Well, in "Spaceman," Sandler's sad-sack cosmonaut gets some help from — are you ready for this? — a giant talking spider, voiced by Paul Dano. The movies are back!

Since Sandler's character, Jakub Procházka, spends the majority of the movie in space, the actor was required to float around a lot to imply zero-gravity conditions. That meant Sandler had to be hooked up on wires to simulate all that floating, and as it turns out, the experience was not a comfortable one for The Sandman. Sandler revealed his discomfort during a press conference for the film at the Berlin Film Festival.

During the press conference (via Variety), Sandler said: "The wires were tough because my body's not the most flexible body. The wires hurt me, they dug into me. The stuntmen who would wire me up every day, I would say 'that hurts' and they didn't believe me." He added: "But we did it as a team. [Director] Johan [Renck] would say, 'You don't look like you're floating, what are you doing?' And then I would say, 'Well, what should we do?' And then they'd wire Johan up and he'd be like, 'More like this!'"

"Spaceman" is a rather somber affair, so perhaps Sandler was able to use the pain to add to his character's loneliness. Or perhaps it was just a pain in the butt to film. But the actor got through it, and delivered one of his most serious performances to date. In "Spaceman," "Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late."

The sad sci-fi flick opens in select theaters on February 23, 2024, before arriving on Netflix March 1, 2024.