Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is heading from Arrakis to Rama. After he finishes up Dune: Part Two (which was greenlit after Dune: Part One’s commercial success), the director will take on a feature adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project is backed by Alcon Entertainment, the producers behind some genre shows you might have heard of—Prime Video’s The Expanse and Netflix’s The Witcher. Morgan Freeman is also a producer via his production company Revelations Entertainment, which previously held rights to the 1973 award-winning novel.
Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama involves a group of human space explorers flying toward Rama, a large celestial object hurtling toward Earth that humans think is an alien spacecraft, marking the world’s first contact with alien intelligence.
“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,” Alcon co-CEOs Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosov said in a statement. “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.”
It will still be a while until we see this adaptation in theaters, as Villeneuve still has to make Dune: Part Two. In the meantime, you can give Clarke’s novel a reread and speculate what Villeneuve’s Rama will be like.
Buy the Book
Goliath