The late, great astronomer Carl Sagan will be celebrated in an upcoming Warner Bros. biopic according to Variety. Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan will produce the film with Lynda Obst (Interstellar, Contact). While a celebrated astronomer and astrophysicist, Sagan is perhaps best known as the co-creator and host of the internationally-known television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage exploring life and the Universe. The plot of the film is unknown but we anticipate it will explore his scientific work, his time on the award-winning TV show, and his family life.
Druyan and Obst previously worked together on Contact, the film adaptation of Sagan’s science fiction novel about humans interacting with extraterrestrial life forms. While Sagan initially wrote the story as a screenplay in 1979, he turned it into a novel which hit the U.S. bestsellers list in 1985. Druyan and Obst finally released Contact as a film starring Jodie Foster in 1997, after Sagan’s death.
Druyan, Sagan’s wife of 15 years, released Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey last year to follow up on her husband’s renowned thirteen-part 1980 TV show. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted the 2014 series which earned Druyan an Emmy for non-fiction writing.
“We were so honored to have this privilege to be sending this message to a thousand million years from now, a quarter of the way around the galaxy,” said Druyan to the LA Times on making Cosmos at the time. “We all looked upon it as something very sacred, creating this Noah’s ark of human culture on the most distant objects ever touched by human hands.”
Obst co-produced the Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway-starring Interstellar with Emma Thomas (Inception, the Batman franchise) and Nolan. While the Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures film was prided for its scientific accuracy, it was also a box-office bestseller.
Deadfall‘s Zach Dean will write the script, which will most likely feature Sagan’s trademark quote “billions and billions,” which used to describe the enormity of the Universe. A release date hasn’t yet been set for the film.
