Ron Howard to direct sweeping sci-fi tale Seveneves

Ron Howard is headed back into orbit.

The Apollo 13 filmmaker confirmed Thursday on Twitter that he’s on board to direct a big-screen adaptation of Seveneves, Neal Stephenson’s sprawling science-fiction novel about a millennia-long effort to preserve the human race and recolonize Earth after a cataclysmic disaster.

The project will reunite Howard with Apollo 13 screenwriter Bill Broyles, and Howard will also produce alongside Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer and Skydance’s David Ellison and Dana Goldberg.

Published last year, Stephenson’s nearly 900-page tome is set in motion when the moon explodes without explanation, forcing humanity to scramble before lunar fragments decimate the planet. Five thousand years later, seven bloodlines of genetically altered humans dwelling in space look to return to their ancestral home.

Howard, who most recently directed In the Heart of the Sea and the upcoming Inferno, called the Seveneves project “a tremendous opportunity.”