Director-producer duo Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are reteaming with Apollo 13 screenwriter Bill Broyles to adapt Neal Stephenson’s doorstopper of a generation ship novel, Seveneves. This ambitious collaboration will bring Stephenson’s science fiction novel, in which the Moon explodes and humanity flees to space in a Cloud Ark, to the big screen.

Despite having written such celebrated novels as Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, Stephenson hasn’t seen big- or small-screen adaptations of any of his work; as he explained in 2011, many of his books “are simply too long to be made into movies.” But Grazer and Howard—as well as Skydance Media’s David Ellison, a fan of Stephenson’s work, according to Deadline—are clearly intrigued by Seveneves’ premise:

What would happen if the world were ending? 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 word yet on release date. In the meantime, read our review of Seveneves, which praises Stephenson for his extensive research into how humanity could begin anew out in space.