The astrophysicist's widow is teaming with producer of Interstellar and Contact.

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Warner Bros. is developing an untitled drama about the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan.

Lynda Obst and Ann Druyan are producing the film, which will be written by "Deadfall" scripter Zach Dean. Plot details are currently under wraps.

Obst was one of the producers of last year's Christopher Nolan space epic Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, and 1997's Contact, which starred Jodie Foster and McConaughey, and was adapted from Sagan's novel. Warner Bros. teamed with Paramount to release Interstellar, which grossed $672 million worldwide.

Druyan, who was married to Sagan from 1981 to his death in 1996, produced and wrote 2014's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, for which she won an Emmy for non-fiction writing. She was also an executive producer on Contact.

Sagan hosted the TV series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote during the 1980s, and spent much of his career investigating the possibility of life on other planets. He wrote the messages on the Pioneer and the Voyager spacecrafts that were aimed at being understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them.

Sagan was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, leading to the popularization of the phrase "billions and billions" as a means of characterising the vastness of the cosmos. He also published more than 600 scientific papers and wrote books including 'The Dragons of Eden', 'Broca's Brain' and 'Pale Blue Dot'.

Dean came on board last year to write the Methuselah screenplay for Warner Bros. and David Heyman. He is represented by WME, Madhouse Entertainment and attorney Andrew Hurwitz.

The Tracking Board was first to report the news.

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