After successfully rebooting two sci-fi franchises with Blade Runner 2049 and 2021’s critically acclaimed Dune, Denis Villeneuve will be taking a crack at Arthur C’ Clarke’s award-winning 1973 novel Rendezvous With Rama, reports Variety.
Alcon Entertainment, who partnered with Villeneuve for Prisoners and the Blade Runner sequel, recently secured the speculative classic. As expected, they asked the visionary director to helm this project as well. Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreery’s Revelations Entertainment initially held the rights to the live-action adaptation, and they’ll continue to serve as producers alongside Alcon.
Rendezvous With Rama, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, is regarded as one of Clarke’s best works ever produced. That’s saying a lot about an author whose bibliography has arguably redefined the sci-fi literature in and of itself, and co-writing the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey is just a small credit when his portfolio is concerned.
As for the novel itself, Rendezvous takes place in the year 2131, where a group of human explorers intercepts a cylindrical alien spaceship when it enters the solar system. The team decides to uncover the mysteries of the alien vessel, little knowing what awaits them on the other side of this hazardous venture.
Denis Villeneuve himself is currently busy with the second half of his Dune adaptation, which obviously takes precedence given the hype surrounding it. So it goes without saying that it’ll be quite a while before we hear anything more about this new Rendezvous With Rama project.