Netflix Announces 'Annihilation' Release Date

Netflix has announced that the release of the sci-fi horror movie "Annihilation" is set to be on Mar. 12.

While the film has already been released by Paramount Pictures last Feb. 23 in North America, other parts of the world are yet to witness the premiere of the sci-fi film.

As for the reception of North American viewers, "Annihilation" received positive reviews from critics. Directed and penned by pronounced novelist Alex Garland, the film has been called "impressively ambitious" by critics of Rotten Tomatoes with its visuals and thrillers.

In the film, Natalie Portman plays a biology professor and former soldier who goes into an expedition in a place called "The Shimmer," an isolated zone full of mutating plants and animals, after her husband (Oscar Isaac) suddenly disappears.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Tessa Thompson, and Gina Rodriguez play a psychologist, an anthropologist, a physicist, and a paramedic, respectively. These characters join Portman in her expedition.

Portman seems to be happy with her role. "Well I'm such a big fan of Alex Garland, of his writing and his directing and so I was just excited to get to work with him and interact with him and then the script was just unlike anything I had ever read before," the 36-year-old actress told Screenrant.

"It really does make you think about so many things and makes connections between different ideas that I hadn't made myself. And then also has all these women in the lead roles which you just never see on film and it's such a simple thing but it feels so radical," she added.

"Annihilation" is adapted from the award-winning novel by Jeff VanderMeer published in February 2014. The book was the first book in the series "Southern Reach Trilogy," preceding "Authority," published in May 2014, and "Acceptance," published in September the same year.

The novel won the "Nebula Award for Best Novel" and the "Shirley Jackson Award for best novel" in 2014.