Denis Villeneuve, the acclaimed director behind Dune and Blade Runner 2049, is adapting yet another classic sci-fi novel to the big screen, with Rendezvous With Rama.
For those unfamiliar, Rendezvous With Rama is a 1973 novel written by Arthur C. Clarke, who was best known as the author of the legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Clarke was also responsible for writing the screenplay of the film adaption. Rendezvous With Rama deals with humanity’s first contact with aliens, something Villeneuve has tackled before with films like Arrival, which was nominated for Best Picture. Here’s the official description of Rendezvous With Rama,
“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 a long-hoped-for, but also long-feared encounter with a visitor from beyond the stars.”
Apparently, Villeneuve will work with Morgan Freeman on the project, who’s serving as a producer. At the moment, Villeneuve hasn’t detailed the timeline for the project, although it’s likely to still be a way out. This is especially true since the director has already announced he’s working on Dune Part 2, which is scheduled to hit theaters in October 2023.
