the Sea (which was scheduled to begin production in 2012 but has since been scrapped). He also reiterated Freeman's concerns about the difficulty of finding the right script. In an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson in February 2012, Freeman indicated an interest in playing the role of Commander Norton for the film, stating that "my fantasy of commanding a starship is commanding Endeavour". Tyson then asked, "So is this a pitch to be ... that person if they ever make that movie?" to which Freeman reaffirmed, "We are going to make that movie." In response to a plea to "make that come out sooner rather than later", Freeman reiterated that difficulty in authoring a high quality script is the primary barrier for the film, stating "... the only task you have that's really really hard in making movies, harder than getting money, is getting a script ... a good script". In December 2021, it was announced that the film was in development at Alcon Entertainment with Denis Villeneuve set to direct. Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary are on the production team because their Revelations Entertainment previously owned the rights. Alcon co-CEOs Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove will produce. Non-fictional aspects Clarke created the space study program which detects Rama, Project Spaceguard, as a method of identifying near-Earth objects on Earth-impact trajectories; in the novel it was initiated in 2077. A real project named Spaceguard was initiated in 1992, named after Clarke's fictional project and "with the permission and encouragement of Clarke". After interest in the dangers of asteroid strikes was heightened by a series of Hollywood disaster films, the United States Congress gave NASA authorisation and funding to support Spaceguard. By 2017, there were a number of different efforts to detect potentially dangerous asteroids. On 19 October 2017 an incoming interstellar object was discovered by Pan-STARRS, a system similar to Spaceguard. Like Rama, the object had an unusually elongated shape. Before the official Hawaiian name ʻOumuamua was selected by the International Astronomical Union, a popular choice was Rama. See also O'Neill cylinder McKendree cylinder Generation starship References External links Rendezvous with Rama at Worlds Without End Rama series 1973 British novels 1973 science fiction novels Biorobotics in fiction British science fiction novels Hard science fiction Hugo Award for Best Novel-winning works Novels about impact events John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel-winning works Large Magellanic Cloud in fiction