She was inspired to pursue a career in science and communication, starting with amateur radio, by her father who has since passed away. Ellie Arroway is employed in the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and several Saturn Awards.ĭr. Sony Pictures Imageworks handled most of the visual effects.Ĭontact was released on July 11, 1997, and grossed over $171 million worldwide. With Zemeckis as director, filming ran from September 1996 to February 1997. Roland Joffé and George Miller had planned to direct, but Joffé dropped out in 1993, and Warner Bros. When development stalled, Sagan published Contact as a novel in 1985, and the film reentered development in 1989. with Peter Guber and Lynda Obst as producers. They wrote a film treatment over 100 pages long and set up the project at Warner Bros. Sagan and Druyan began working on Contact in 1979. It features the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Mir space station, and the Space Coast surrounding Cape Canaveral. It also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse. Eleanor 'Ellie' Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film. Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan.

Contact sagan