The hype machine was cranking in Ballroom 20 at Comic-Con this afternoon for Quantum Quest, a 3-D animated feature about “Dave the photon” who leaves the sun to “save his people and save the Cassini spacecraft from the forces of fear and ignorance.”
Clearly, we wish these guys well. Nothing would make us happier at Discover than to have an astronomy movie written by NASA scientists penetrate the public consciousness in some meaningful way.
That being said, we hope they have a good editor, because the amount of information conveyed at this panel was overwhelming.
Here is just a small portion of my notes from the session:
“The first film originated by NASA and JPL.”
“Ten years in the making”
“Panel includes space tourist Anousheh Ansari, at least five guys from various iterations of Star Trek and the voice of SpongeBob.”
“Audience seems to be mostly Trekkies.”
“Discoveries and images from seven different space missions”
“Brent Spiner is calling in from his car on a speakerphone. He plays some sort of celestial football coach for particles of light.”
“Samuel L. Jackson controls forces of fear and ignorance”
“Fear and Ignorance portrayed by Jason Alexander and Tom Kenny”
“One of the characters is a ’solar surfing photon’ named ‘Jammer.’”
“Shatner plays the core of the Sun.”
“Neil Armstrong is one of the voice actors.”
“Dave the photon resembles the Predator as imagined by a 70’s album cover artist.”
If they can actually pull this off, QQ has the potential to be awesome.
Release is scheduled for September 2009 in 3-D and IMAX.
[UPDATE: I inadvertently created some confusion over at io9 by telling them on my way to the panel that Sarah Michelle Gellar voices one of the photons, which I had read on imdb. At the panel, it sounded like they had recast the voice actors in the project and Chris Pine (the new Capt. Kirk) plays the lead photon, Dave. They didn’t mention SMG so I am guessing she is no longer involved.]
July 27th, 2008 at 10:05 am
[…] Annalee Newitz on 25 Jul 2008 One of the few science nonfiction movies being talked about at Comic-Con is Quantum Quest, the tale of a photon who travels outward from the sun to save the Cassini spacecraft. Discover has a hilarious writeup of the panel devoted to Quantum Quest, which sounds like it could in fact be what you get when you mix extreme astronomy geeks with Star Trek cast members and a wee bit of LSD. Apparently Sara Michelle Gellar plays the photon, Brent “Data” Spiner calls in on his cell phone to “coach” her, and Shatner plays the core of the sun. Um, that sounds creepy. And there’s so much more. [Discover] […]
July 28th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
[…] Next year’s Quantum Quest movie - the Cassini probe gets deeply weird. […]