This Sci-Fi Movie Based On A Book Was Rejected As Unmakeable Because It Was 'Too Smart'
Plenty of sci-fi novels have been dubbed "unfilmable," from Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" to Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven." But the most well-known example remains "Dune," Frank Herbert's 1965 tome that, until Denis Villeneuve's epic saga, seemed too dense to successfully adapt to film. Even Villeneuve was terrified of actually directing "Dune" prior to delivering his duology in 2021's "Dune: Part One" and 2024's "Dune: Part Two." He needn't have been, though, especially since he'd already taken a supposedly unmakeable sci-fi story and turned it into a big screen success.
Villeneuve's 2016 picture "Arrival" was an adaptation of Ted Chiang's 1998 novella "Story of Your Life" — a story initially rejected by Hollywood due to it being considered "too smart" to be made into a feature film. "Story of Your Life" is written in the second person from the perspective of linguist Dr. Louise Banks as she addresses her unborn daughter. Its narrative oscillates between past and present, recounting the prior arrival of aliens on Earth and how their language was decoded while also looking into the future at Banks' daughter's life. All of this, apparently, made for something entirely unsuitable for a movie in the eyes of studio executives.
Eric Heisserer did the work of adapting Chiang's novella into a script for Villeneuve to direct, but as the writer told Vice around the time that "Arrival" hit theaters, actually selling the script was a challenge to say the least. "Every studio passed," he recalled. "Telling me they didn't see this as a movie. That it was too smart, which I began to see as an excuse to pass on something that isn't a franchise movie."
Arrival took years to finally arrive, but it became a big hit when it did
After Eric Heisserer experienced what Vice called "an intellectual and visceral reaction" to Ted Chiang's stories, he adapted "Story of Your Life" on spec, seemingly not realizing how much trouble he would have selling the finished screenplay. At one point, the writer even gave up on pitching it. That is, until his meeting with Dan Levine, Dan Cohen, and Shawn Levy of 21 Laps Entertainment proved successful.
According to a 2016 Wall Street Journal piece, the company called Heisserer a week after the meeting and said they were interested. In an interview with Awards Daily to promote the film's release, Dan Levine spoke about being drawn to the project due to the fact it wasn't about "alien craft landing and there are explosions and alien invasions. Instead, what we have here in 'Arrival' is that aliens arrive, and we attempt to find out what they actually want, and that really was interesting to me."
Even after 21 Laps came on board, however, there was still work to be done. Levine and his team told Awards Daily they went through "many drafts" of the script before they reached out to directors. Once the screenplay was in better shape, Levine met with Denis Villeneuve, and he was immediately excited about it. When "Arrival" finally reached theaters it was a major hit, as evidenced by its 94% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and $203.4 million box office gross on a $47 million budget. The film itself is one of the greatest science fiction movies of the 21st century, and original novella author Ted Chiang was very pleased with Villeneuve's adaptation. All in all then, it was a major success — not bad for a movie that was supposedly unfilmable.