Andy Weir's Bestseller makes it to big screen

fuad lawal

June 12, 2015 1:41 AM

The upcoming science fiction movie is based on Weir’s novel of the same name but, since the trailer dropped Monday, Weir has been inundated with questions about the movie’s accuracy and star Matt Damon, who played a similar role in “Interstellar.”

Andy Weir is excited about his bestselling book, The Martian, making it to the Cinema. The upcoming science fiction movie is based on Weir’s novel of the same name but, since the trailer dropped Monday, Weir has been inundated with questions about the movie’s accuracy and star Matt Damon, who played a similar role in “Interstellar.”

“The Martian” was first released as a self-published novel in 2011. Its the story of Mark Watney, a NASA astronaut who’s stranded alone on Mars when his crewmates think he’s killed in an accident on the Red Planet. From there Watney, played by Damon, needs to figure out how to stay alive by himself on a desolate tundra without fertile soil and enough supplies to last only 31 days.

Unlike similar stories, though, “The Martian” immediately earned rave reviews for its scientific accuracy. Weir, a computer programmer by day, said last year that he figured out how far Watney would need to travel across Mars and mapped the route with NASA’s real-life satellite imagery of Mars. He also calculated how many calories Watney would need to consume to survive on Mars, figured out the chemical reaction that’d enable Watney to create water and determined that it would be possible for an astronaut to grow his own potatoes on Mars despite being 141,600,000 miles from the Sun.

“So in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the s--- out of this,” Damon, as Watney, says in the trailer in what could be the biggest understatement in cinema history.

Damon also played a stranded astronaut in 2014’s “Interstellar,” something Weir noted on Twitter. Other “Martian” cast members include Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig and Michael Pena.

The movie is scheduled to be released November 25

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