Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones to Star in Carl Sagan Biopic From Sebastián Lelio

Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones have signed on to star in Voyagers, a biopic from director Sebastián Lelio about the real-life love story of celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Ann Druyan.

Ben Browning is producing Voyagers from FilmNation Entertainment, alongside Druyan and Lynda Obst. FilmNation will kick off global sales of the upcoming project at the Cannes film market later this month.

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The film is set in 1977 as NASA is preparing to launch humanity’s first interstellar probes, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions. A team, led by Sagan, sets out to create a message to accompany them: the Golden Record, a group of images and sounds meant to express the essence of humanity and act as a first-contact greeting for any galactic lifeforms the probes might reach. But what starts out as a race-against-the-clock mission becomes an epic, unexpected love story between Sagan and his collaborator Druyan.

Lelio and Jessica Goldberg co-wrote the screenplay for Voyagers based on interviews with Druyan and others who worked on the Golden Record project.

“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,” Lelio said in a statement. “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.”

Added Druyan: “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.”

Garfield and Edgar-Jones co-starred in the FX limited series Under the Banner of Heaven, for which Garfield landed his first Emmy Award nomination and Edgar-Jones her second Golden Globe award nom. A double Oscar nominee — for Tick, Tick … Boom! (2022) and Hacksaw Ridge (2017) — Garfield is currently in production on John Crowley’s upcoming We Live in Time, starring alongside Florence Pugh.

Edgar-Jones, a breakout star from Hulu’s Normal People (2020), starred in last year’s box office hit Where the Crawdads Sing.

Lelio is represented by LARK, Entertainment 360 and Granderson Des Rochers; Garfield is represented by CAA, Gordon & French, ID and Sloane Offer; Edgar-Jones is repped by UTA, Hamilton Hodell, Relevant, Public Eye Communications and Sloane Offer; Goldberg is represented by United Talent Agency and attorney Jeff Franke; Obst is represented by Eric Suddleson at Felker Toczek.

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