Yahoo Lifestyle Kubrick Estate On Board Upcoming Documentary On Impact Of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’; Leonardo DiCaprio, Mike Medavoy & More Producing
EXCLUSIVE: The impact of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey will be explored in an upcoming documentary that’s being made in partnership with the legendary filmmaker’s estate and the Stanley Kubrick Film Archive.
Producing the film titled Monolith are Mike Medavoy and Michael Lee Peterson of Phoenix Pictures, Jason Clark of Catchlight Studios, Sean Richard, and Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson of Appian Way. Partners in Kind and TIME Studios are co-financing the film.
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The documentary, expected to be released in 2026, begins production this month. Helming the film is Stevan Riley, director of the acclaimed 2015 Brando-themed documentary Listen to be Marlon.
“2001 is the ultimate Zeitgeist movie,” Riley said in a statement. “It was recently voted the #1 movie of all time by film directors, and for good reason. It predicts and speaks to the dramatic technological and societal changes that we are facing today.”
2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke (based on Clarke’s short story The Sentinel) was released in 1968, and starred Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, with Douglas Rain as the eerie voice of the supercomputer HAL.
“Monolith offers an in-depth exploration of the groundbreaking ideas that emerged from the partnership between Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and their collaborators, many of which have shaped the modern era,” notes a release. “The documentary will showcase never-before-seen personal letters and narratives between Kubrick and Clarke, and feature insightful interviews from contemporary visionaries and changemakers across diverse disciplines who themselves took inspiration from the film to create the world we live in today.”
Gillian Hormel and Shelly Tygielski will serve as executive producers for Partners in Kind, with Dave O’Connor and Loren Hammonds as EPs for TIME Studios. Also executive producing will be Phillip Watson from Appian Way, and Fares I. Fares.
Partners in Kind executive Claudia Cahill, founder of Omnicom Media Group’s Entertainment and Content Marketing division, will lead brand partnership negotiations and program development.
“The Partners in Kind Foundation, in collaboration with Propper Daley BPI, will spearhead philanthropic social good campaigns and activations inspired by the film’s key themes,” the release says, “including artificial intelligence and ethics, human evolution, and the pursuit of knowledge.”
In the decades since its release, 2001: A Space Odyssey has only grown in reputation (in 1969, critic Pauline Kael famously panned it, but she was an outlier). In 2013, Killian Fox wrote in the Guardian, “Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey is, for me, primarily about the experience of total awe. Yes, you can spend an entire evolutionary stage debating the meaning of the interstellar monolith, or whether or not the film is really an elaborate triple allegory involving Nietzsche and Homer.”
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