Freeman Wants Fincher To "Rendezvous With Rama"

Actor Morgan Freeman of Revelations Entertainment is still interested in producing a film version of author Arthur C. Clarke's 1972 sci-fi novel "Rendezvous With Rama", with David Fincher attached to direct.

"We're still pushing for 'Rendezvous With Rama'," Freeman said. "That's a got-to-be-done movie...I've been trying for 15 years now to get a script...Fincher is still part of the conversation".

Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" is set in the 22nd century, involving a fifty-kilometre-long cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.

The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release.

The 'Rama' of the title is the star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after 'king Rama' who is considered to be the seventh avatar of the Hindu god 'Vishnu'. Asteroid '31/439' is detected by astronomers in the year 2130 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100 000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that it is not an object on a long orbit around the sun, but originates from interstellar space.

An unmanned space probe dubbed 'Sita' is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, with photographs taken during its rapid flyby revealing that Rama is a mathematically perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres in diameter and 54 kilometres long.

The manned solar survey vessel 'Endeavour' is sent to study Rama, one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft already is within Venus' orbit.

The 20+ crew, led by 'Commander Norton', enters Rama and explores the cylindrical interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic. The only lifeforms on board are cybernetic 'biots' who ignore the humans.

After several misadventures, including a 1 gigaton nuclear missile fired from Mercury with the intent of destroying Rama, Endeavour is finally forced to leave a few weeks later as Rama moves too close to the Sun for Endeavour's cooling systems to compensate.

Rama is then flung out of the solar system towards an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, harnessing the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious 'space drive'.

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