Marvel's Andrew Garfield Playing Carl Sagan in New Movie
Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield has landed his next role. According to Variety, Garfield is set to star as legendary astronomer and author Carl Sagan in the upcoming Voyagers. He will star alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones, who will play Ann Druyan, Sagan's wife. The film is set to be directed by Sebastian Lelio and will be produced by Ben Browning for FilmNation Entertainment, Lynda Obst, and the real-life Druyan herself.
According to Variety, Voyagers takes place in 1977 and is set against NASA's efforts to launch humanity's first interstellar probes with a team, led by Sagan, working to create a message to accompany the probes (the Golden Record) that includes music and images for possible alien civilizations. However, the race against time to finish the work sees Sagan and Druyan working together — and falling in love. The film's screenplay, written by Lelio and Jessica Goldberg, is based on interviews with Druyan and others who worked on the Golden Record project.
In addition to the work with NASA, Sagan and Druyan wrote the influential PBS series Cosmos which debuted in 1980 and consisted of 13 episodes covering a wide range of scientific subjects. It's Cosmos that Lelio cited as having an impact on him as a child.
"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."