Astronaut Scott Kelly Spends Year in Space, Gets Sony Movie Deal (Exclusive)

Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon are producing the adaptation of Kelly's memoir, 'Endurance: My Year in Space.'

Sony Pictures has picked up the competitive rights to astronaut Scott Kelly’s upcoming book, Endurance: My Year in Space.

Amy Pascal will produce the adaptation via her Pascal Pictures banner along with Elizabeth Cantillon, who will produce via her shingle, The Cantillon Company. Rachel O’Connor also will produce for Pascal Pictures.

Kelly is the pioneering astronaut who spent 340 consecutive days in space for a special mission on the International Space Station. Combined with previous missions, he holds the record for the most days spent in space for an American, with a total of 382 days away from Earth.

He is the identical twin brother of Mark Kelly, also an astronaut and the husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Endurance, being written by Margaret Lazarus Dean and to be published in November 2017 by Knopf, will chronicle Kelly’s early struggles as a C-student, his training as a Navy test pilot and the loving but highly competitive drive both he and his identical twin brother underwent to become astronauts. The book will documents his achievements, as well as the trials and tribulations that he faced, while his family experienced both triumph as well as tragedy on Earth.

David Beaubaire will oversee the project for the studio. Laura Quicksilver will oversee for The Cantillon Company.

Scott and Mark Kelly will serve as co-executive producers of the adaptation. Giffords will act as consultant, as will Dean.

Pascal Pictures was one of the production entities behind the Ghostbusters reboot and is in production on Spider-Man: Homecoming. Pascal is in preproduction on Molly’s Game, which is serving as Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut.

Cantillon, who was a high-ranking Sony exec before transitioning to a producer role, was a producer on the Will Smith football drama Concussion and is developing a reboot of Charlie’s Angels, which has Elizabeth Banks attached to direct.

The Endurance deal was negotiated by UTA on behalf of Scott Kelly and New York publishing agent Elyse Cheney, who negotiated the book deal.