Under The Banner of Heaven stars Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones will reunite in Sebastián Lelio’s Voyagers, a biopic on NASA astronomer Carl Sagan and director/producer Ann Druyan’s romance during their work on the Golden Record interstellar probe in the late 1970s.
Sagan is most known for his work in NASA as well as writing the sci-fi novel Contact, which became a film in 1997 starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey after Sagan and Druyan wrote the treatment for the film. The pair, who got married in 1981 after their work on the Golden Record, also developed the PBS series Cosmos covering a several scientific and cosmic discoveries.
Garfield will play Sagan while Edgar-Jones will play Druyan. The synopsis for the film reads:
Voyagers unfolds in 1977 as NASA prepared to launch humanity’s first interstellar probes. A team led by Sagan sets out to create a message to accompany them, known as the Golden Record, which included music and images, for possible alien civilizations. But what starts out as a race-against-the-clock mission blossoms into a love story between Sagan and Druyan.
Druyan wrote the script with Lelio and Jessica Goldberg. The trio based the story on Druyan’s experiences as well as interviews with her and several others involved in the Golden Record project.
“As a nine-year-old boy growing up during Chile’s dictatorship, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s TV series ‘Cosmos’ had a profound impact on me, igniting my fascination with life’s biggest questions and mysteries,” Lelio said. “It is a dream to make a movie about the Golden Record and, within it, the inspiring love story between Carl and Ann. I’m thrilled that Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones will be at the center of this epic romance set against the infinite backdrop of space and time.”
“Imagine falling madly, truly in love with one of the greatest humans who ever lived, while creating a complex message about what it is to be alive, a golden record affixed to the first interstellar spacecraft launched by our species, bound to sail the Milky Way galaxy long after Earth ceases to exist,” Druyan said. “It takes a movie to bring that mythic experience, that cosmic love story to vivid life. After years of searching, I feel that we have found exactly the right colleagues and artists to capture the magic of it.”
Voyagers will be produced by Druyan, FilmNation Entertainment’s Ben Browning, and Lynda Obst, who worked with Sagan and Druyan on Contact.
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