If you're going to adapt a sci-fi novel about interstellar travel, you could do worse than reassemble the team behind Apollo 13, who brought a real-life story of space endeavour to life to Oscar-winning effect. And that's exactly the plan for production company Skydance, which has Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and writer William Broyles Jr. aboard to turn Neal Stephenson's Seveneves into a movie.
Published last year, Stephenson's ambitious tome sees a catastrophic event looming, which will make Earth uninhabitable. The various nations are able to team up to launch humanity into space so the species can survive. The story then spins the clock forward by five thousand years, and sees the much-changed human race, which has mingled with other species in the galaxy, headed back to a world they barely recognise: the blue marble we call home.
It's early days for this one, but it looks like Howard will actually sit in the director's chair, making the Apollo 13 reunion complete. Though you've got to figure that all involved will be hoping he steps up. Howard's next film is his latest adaptation of Dan Brown's work, with Inferno due on October 14.