Scott Kelly Gets a Movie Deal about His Year in Space

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who holds the American record for most days spent in space (382 in total), will soon be coming to a theater near you. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Sony Pictures obtained the rights to Kelly’s forthcoming book, Endurance: My Year In Space. As the memoir’s title suggests, the film will focus on Kelly’s famous 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. Kelly returned to Earth on March 1, 2016.

A film documenting the adventures of America’s most beloved space cowboy is pretty much guaranteed to be dramatic. While the climactic final scene would logically be his successful return to Earth, we really hope we get a hair-raising account of Kelly’s emergency spacewalk in December 2015. Along with fellow American astronaut Col. Tim Kopra, Kelly was instructed to perform a completely unplanned spacewalk with less than a day’s notice in order to fix a stalled mechanism on the ISS’s outer surface. NASA livestreamed the walk, but really, this is the kind of stuff destined for the big screen. We also hope the film saves a few minutes for that time Kelly donned a gorilla suit and got silly in microgravity.

The astronaut maintained such a strong social media presence during his year in space that the movie already has a built-in fan base. THR noted that Kelly’s book will cover not just his mission in space, but his personal life and his family back on Earth.

Endurance: My Year In Space will be released by Knopf in 2017.