After taking on Frank Herbert’s Dune, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) is now set to direct an adaptation of author Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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The movie hails from Alcon Entertainment, which previously collaborated with Villeneuve on the crime drama Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, led by Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Ana de Armas.
Alcon Entertainment’s co-CEOs Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosov will produce along with Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary through their Revelations Entertainment production company. Freeman reportedly previously held the rights to Clarke’s novel.
“This is one of the most intelligent works of fiction in the genre; it poses as many questions as it does answers, and is a work for our time,” said Johnson and Kosove. “It’s perfectly fitted to our friend and collaborator Denis’ brilliant sensibilities and specifically to his love and passion for science fiction. We are also pleased to work with Morgan and Lori, who have a long-standing passion for this IP.”
Pick up your copy of the novel here!
The synopsis for the award-winning book reads: “By the year 2130, the solar system has been colonized, with humans living on planets ranging from Mercury to the moons of Neptune. Despite so much expansion and discovery, there have been no signs of intelligent life besides our own Earth-born. Until Rama.
“Weighing more than ten trillion tons, smoothly shaped, and racing towards the sun at astonishing speed, Rama was no natural object, but clearly an interstellar spacecraft. It appeared to be on course to loop around the Sun, but at a dangerously close orbit. After Commander William Tsien Norton makes the tricky landing of his ship Endeavor on the edge of the colossal craft, he discovers an airlock. Awaiting him on the other side of that portal is a historical moment not experienced since Pizzaro met the Incas or Howard Carter peered into the tomb of Tutankhamen—the long-hoped-for, but also long-feared encounter with a visitor from beyond the stars.”
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Villeneuve’s upcoming projects also include Dune: Part Two, the limited series The Son starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and Dune: The Sisterhood, a series set in the Dune universe centering on the lives of the Bene Gesserit.
