Ron Howard To Direct Film Based on Neal Stephenson's Sci-Fi Epic 'Seveneves'

Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard is set to direct a film based on Neal Stephenson's sci-fi novel of the same palindromic title Seveneves. Howard is reuniting with Apollo 13 screenwriter Bill Broyles to adapt the story into the big screen, Variety reports. The novel is massive, with three parts covering 5,000 years of humanity's future. "a thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years." . Check out the official description:

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain...

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

No doubt that this is Howard's most ambitious project yet. The description alone speaks for itself. It sounds like a project that Christopher Nolan would take; hell it sounds even more ambitious than Interstellar. I'm wondering how they would compress an 880-page book into one feature length film. I've heard from several critics that the book is excessive with overly-descriptive passages. The film would probably sum those up in visuals, and hopefully trim down excessive details without cutting its essential plot and themes

. I'm glad that that they decided to tackle a project of this scale and depth. Seveneves is a solid science fiction film, and despite the novel's mixed reviews, I would rather see Seveneves than a lot of the other sci-fi junk we see a lot in Hollywood these days. I hope they would adapt Stephenson's other works like Snow Crash and Diamond Age as well, although I think they'd fit better in a TV series format because of their lengths. Stephenson is one of the greatest sci-fi authors living today, so if you're in the mood for hard sci-fi with deep themes, I highly recommend his books.