Everything We Know About Voyagers, The Carl Sagan Movie Starring Andrew Garfield
Carl Sagan, for those who may not know, was an astronomer and charismatic cosmologist who came into the public eye in 1980 with the broadcast of his PBS series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." That show, in addition to Sagan's many novels, books, and lectures, helped popularize astral science, bringing casual conversations about space to new heights.
Sagan's popularity is understandable. He was affable and well-spoken, and he talked about fun scientific concepts like the existence of UFOs, and the actual, mathematical odds that an alien civilization might someday visit Earth; given the size of the universe, Sagan calculated that there are at least a million Earth-like civilizations out there somewhere. The film "Contact" is based on his novel. Sagan was also a major advocate for marijuana use, and was rather spiritual, despite often speaking out against religion or the existence of an intelligent God. He was a fascinating dude.
Sagan passed away in 1996. The only mystery is why it's taken Hollywood so long to make a biopic of his life. That will change with the upcoming "Voyagers." As announced by Variety on May 5, 2023, Andrew Garfield will star in the film as Sagan, with Daisy Edgar-Jones playing author/SETI scientist Ann Druyan, Sagan's third wife, to whom he was married to from 1981 until his death. It was Druyan's photos of Earth that largely inspired Sagan to write his book "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space."
Here's everything we know about the movie so far.
What is Voyagers about?
Per Variety, "Voyagers" will be set in 1977, when Carl Sagan first met Ann Druyan, and while he was still married to his second wife Lynn Salzman. Salzman was one of the authors of the Voyager Golden Record, an audio disc, actually made of gold, that was sent into space on a SETI mission. The disc contained music, language samples, and a lot of general information about humanity that, the authors felt, would be useful to any extraterrestrials that might find it. Druyan, at the same time, was head of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project, and also helped produce the records. Sagan selected the contents of the record. The film will be presented as a love story.
Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, who is directing "Voyagers," was one of the many kids who saw "Cosmos" when it was initially broadcast, and he found it to be a salve from the rigors of Augusto Pinochet's regime at the time. In Variety, he was quoted as saying:
"As a nine-year-old boy growing up during Chile's dictatorship, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's TV series 'Cosmos' had a profound impact on me, igniting my fascination with life's biggest questions and mysteries. [...] It is a dream to make a movie about the Golden Record and, within it, the inspiring love story between Carl and Ann. I'm thrilled that Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones will be at the center of this epic romance set against the infinite backdrop of space and time."
The Voyagers creative team
In addition to directing, Sebastián Lelio wrote the screenplay for "Voyagers" with Jessica Goldberg, based on interviews held with Ann Druyan. Lelio's previous directorial credits include "The Wonder," "A Fantastic Woman," and "Disobedience," as well as both "Gloria" and its English-language remake "Gloria Bell." He tends to make films about powerful individuals whose own character is pitted against a world that would leave them feeling oppressed. This was surely the case with "A Fantastic Woman," "Disobedience," and "Gloria."
Druyan herself is quoted by Variety as saying that she was waiting for the right creative team to tell her and Carl Sagan's stories:
"Imagine falling madly, truly in love with one of the greatest humans who ever lived, while creating a complex message about what it is to be alive, a golden record affixed to the first interstellar spacecraft launched by our species, bound to sail the Milky Way galaxy long after Earth ceases to exist. [...] It takes a movie to bring that mythic experience, that cosmic love story to vivid life. After years of searching, I feel that we have found exactly the right colleagues and artists to capture the magic of it."
The Voyagers cast
Daisy Edgar-Jones starred in the films "Fresh" and "Where the Crawdads Sing," in addition to the series "Normal People." She previously appeared opposite Andrew Garfield in the true crime drama series "Under the Banner of Heaven."
"Voyagers" will be yet another film in Garfield's filmography wherein he plays a character who wrestles with larger notions of faith and God. In 2016, Garfield starred in Martin Scorsese's "Silence," in which he played a 17th-century Jesuit monk who begins to have second thoughts about the presence of God in the world. That same year, Garfield starred in Mel Gibson's "Hacksaw Ridge," a film about a doctor who wanted to help treats soldiers during World War II, but whose Christianity prevented him from touching a weapon. Much of that film is about the pacifist underpinnings of most faiths.
Garfield also played the horrendous televangelist Jim Bakker in Michael Showalter's "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a film largely about the hypocrisy of Bakker's "prosperity gospel" philosophies. When it comes to characters that foreground their faith, Garfield seems attracted.