Contact
1997 film
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Additional data
| Screenplay | James V. Hart, Michael Goldenberg |
| Story | Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan |
| Based on | "Contact" by Carl Sagan |
| Producer | Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey |
| Cast | Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Angela Bassett |
| Editor | Arthur Schmidt |
| Music | Alan Silvestri |
| Production company | South Side Amusement Company |
| Distributor | Warner Bros. |
| Language | English |
Description
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan. Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. The film also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey and David Morse. The film 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.
Sagan and Druyan began working on Contact in 1979. They wrote a film treatment more than 100 pages long and set up Contact at Warner Bros. with Peter Guber and Lynda Obst as producers. When development stalled, Sagan published Contact as a novel in 1985, and the film reentered development in 1989. Roland Joffé and George Miller had planned to direct, but Joffé dropped out in 1993, and Warner Bros. fired Miller in 1995. With Zemeckis as director, filming lasted from September 1996 to February 1997. Sony Pictures Imageworks handled most of the visual effects sequences.
Contact was released on July 11, 1997. It grossed over $171 million worldwide and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation along with several wins at the Saturn Awards.