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Rendezvous With Rama (2003)
Plot: In the future an enormous cylindrical object enters our solar system. A ship is dispatched to investigate. The astronauts learn that the object is an immense spaceship. Entering it they find themselves inside a giant moving world that seems unihabited. What is it and why is it here?
News:
1 April, 2002
We received an interesting report on the project's status from Moviefans.de. The report below appeared in the Revelations March 2002 newsletter.
Revelations is in heavy rewrites with "Panic Room" director David Fincher on "Rendezvous with Rama." Morgan will star in the Arthur C. Clark (author of "2001: A Space Odyssey") sci-fi epic. Bruce McKenna is revising his own first draft with David. Revelations is currently awaiting the approved "Fincher draft" before going out to financiers.
Rama will be ground breaking and possibly even record breaking in its digital effects. That is why we're taling to "all the usual suspects" for special effects bids. We are also in serious negotations with Intel to become a major technology partner in the making of Rama.
Revelations hopes to launch Rama's previsualization phase sometime this spring!
What do you think? Talk about it on the Forums
19 February, 2002
A couple interesting notes on this film today. The first come from Jo over at a.fincher.news.site and it seems to indicate that we're going to be waiting a bit longer.
I wanted to tell you is that a trusting source of the Rama production told me that Fincher will at least direct another movie after Panic Room before directing Rama. This will probably be They Fought Alone with Brad Pitt. Besides he's developing the Michael Bay producing Stay and Squids.
The second piece of news is from Coming Attractions where Patrick reviewed the script for the film. Here's a taste.
But in addition to being able to adapt Clarke's grand imagery from prose to script, Brick did a favor for the science fiction grandmaster. I've read almost all of Arthur C. Clarke's novels (Childhood's End being my favorite), but one complaint I've had of his writing is Clarke's characters. In many of Clarke's books his characters are secondary and could be interchanged with any of the other characters from the author's other books. While Clarke injected a little more humanity into his Rama characters than, say, Dave Bowman or Heywood Floyd from 2001, Brick manages to add to that and give his Rama movie characters a little more flavor. I consider it a very wise move, especially when adapting a hard science fiction project like Rama. Yoy get the sense as to why Captain Norton is a hard-ass when it comes to following rules and regulations on his ship, or why Jimmy Pak, the team's hazardous environments officer, likes to play it fast and loose. I also liked the small touch of including a crewmember who was devoutly religious and who also offered his own ideas as to why Rama has come to Earth. The Endeavour crewmembers all get their opportunity to become three- dimensional, living, breathing characters, and that's precisely what James Cameron did with his space marines in Aliens.
You can read the rest of the review here.
What do you think? Talk about it on the Forums
3 May, 2001
DavidFincher.net talked to producer Lori McCreary about the project. It sounds like they have really big plans for the movie. They are also in early talks for the design of theme park rides based on the movie and are "...planning on doing a 20 minute short version of Rama for I-MAX (using a subset of the film)." It will likely require additional footage be shot specifically for the IMAX version. They also plan to lean on the official website heavily for promotion so keep your eyes on it. Finally, the official site has added some new artwork worth checking out.
What do you think? Talk about it on the Forums
19 April, 2001
Lori Mccreary and Morgan Freeman appeared this year at Comdex to talk about the movie during Intel's presentation. Included in the presentation was a series of conceptual drawings, a digital model of the Rama spacecraft as well as a model of a Biot.
If, like most of us, you missed the presentation, you can catch a streaming video of the presentation online. Follow this link and skip forward to 43:30 for the details.
What do you think? Talk about it on the Forums
18 January, 2001
Okay not entirely CGI. Producer Lori McCreary spoke to a.fincher.news.site about the movie and said that the movie would not be a totally CGI movie in the same vein as Final Fantasy. The actors would be created with a combination of motion capture, facial capture and digital film. That's a pretty vague explanation but it's the best we have for the moment.
She also states that Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) will be doing a rewrite on Scott Bricks' draft of the script. Finally McCreary says that Intel is in the process of cooking up a digital effects system to make the movie with.
Not all CGI? Talk about it on the Forums
11 January, 2001
Now we know why it was so important for Revelations to team up with Intel on this project. The official website for the movie has just opened and it claims that this movie will be 100% computer animation. It says that the movie will be an "Entirely digitally created feature film, with photorealistic digital environments, sets and most importantly, actors." The site lists 2003 as a release date.
Mostly the site consists of a slideshow, possibly to attract investors. It clears up a few facts though. It lists David Fincher as director for one thing. It also states the involvement of Arthur C. Clarke, whose book this will be based on, Morgan Freeman and Moebius.
Easily the most attractive part of the site are the included production sketches. Among them are several interior shots of the Rama vessel and one sketch of the octo-spiders.
3 October, 2000
Intel has paired with Revelations Entertainment. Why? Together they intend to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous With Rama into a movie. The pair will form a new company devoted to digital filmmaking. Those familiar with Clarke's novel are probably aware that it is nearly unfilmable without considerable assitance from digital effects.
Morgan Freeman is attached to star as the leader of the group sent to investigate a strange object entering our solar system. David Fincher is attached to direct. It could possibly be his next movie after Panic Room, his current project. Freeman founded Revelations with just such a project in mind. "The current trend toward more digital effects in film will continue until digital cinematography is the norm, not the event that it is now, and Lori [McCreary, Revelations CEO] and I created Revelations with this kind of technological leap in mind," said Freeman.
Intel has been manufacturing computer workstations used in digital effects and is looking to get more involved. "The Itanium processor-based workstations will be a work horse for designers who need increased performance for developing digital content including complex 3-D modeling, animation, scene rendering, video editing and special effects," said Will Swope, VP and general manager of Intel Solutions Enabling Group.