The film stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a linguist enlisted by the United States Army to discover how to communicate with extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth, before tensions lead to war.

Arrival had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2016, and was released theatrically in the United States by Paramount Pictures on November 11, 2016.

It grossed $203 million worldwide and received critical acclaim, with particular praise for Adams's performance, Villeneuve's direction, and the exploration of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.

[4][5] It received eight nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, and won Best Sound Editing.

In the United States, US Army Colonel Weber recruits Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to study the craft above Montana.

When Banks is able to establish sufficient shared vocabulary to ask why the heptapods have come, they answer with a statement that could be translated as "offer weapon".

Banks argues that the symbol interpreted as "weapon" can be more abstractly related to the concepts of "means" or "tool"; China's translation likely results from interacting with the heptapods using mahjong, a highly competitive game.

Russia, Pakistan, and Sudan follow suit; communications between the international research teams are terminated as worldwide panic sets in.

Banks suggests that the full message is split between the twelve craft and that the heptapods want all the nations to collaborate in order to decipher it.

At the event, General Shang of China thanks Banks for persuading him to stop the attack when she called his private number and recited his wife's dying words.

In the present, Banks takes CIA agent Halpern's satellite phone from a table and calls Shang's private number to recite the words.

[11] After writing an initial spec script, Heisserer pitched it to production companies for several years without receiving any interest and nearly gave up on the project.

[14] Cohen and Levine introduced Villeneuve to the novella, which he immediately took to, although his work on Prisoners meant that he did not have the time to properly adapt it into a screenplay with Heisserer.

[14] Heisserer made several changes to "Story of Your Life" between writing his original screenplays and the final script, the main one being that the heptapods actually arrived on Earth in a type of first contact situation, as he felt this helped to create the tension and conflict needed for a film.

[11] Heisserer said that earlier versions of the script had a different ending: the gift from the heptapods was to have been "blueprints to an interstellar ship, like an ark of sorts", to enable humanity to help them in 3,000 years.

[20] Principal photography lasted for 56 days, beginning on June 7, 2015, after Renner had fulfilled his obligations to Captain America: Civil War.

[23] Most of the filming that did not involve the exterior of a ship was done indoors on sound stages, although a real house in Chemin de l'Île, Vaudreuil-Dorion, was used as Banks's home.

We tried to pull back on that a little bit, but then Denis stopped me in the [color timing] and told me not to be so concerned about skin tone and let her be pasty, let her exist in that melancholy space, let us feel that visually.

"[29] Rodeo FX completed 60 visual shots for the film, and said that its biggest challenge was the sequence in which Louise and Ian first enter the alien craft.

[35] Heisserer said at the Alamo Drafthouse's Fantastic Fest premiere of Arrival at the end of September 2016[36] that Shang's wife's last words, translated into English, were "In war, there are no winners, only widows".

[42] Paramount Pictures released a series of promotional posters, with one showing a UFO hovering above a Hong Kong skyline that included Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower.

[44] Shortly after, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired international distribution rights excluding the UK, Australia, China, Greece, India, the Middle East, Turkey and Israel.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion and a terrific performance from Amy Adams.

[57] Robbie Collin of The Telegraph praised the film, calling it "introspective, philosophical and existentially inclined—yet [it] unfolds in an unwavering tenor of chest-tightening excitement.

[65] IGN reviewer Chris Tilly gave it a score of 8.5 out of 10, saying: "Arrival is a language lesson masquerading as a blockbuster, though much more entertaining than that sounds... it's smart, sophisticated sci-fi that asks big questions, and does a pretty good job of answering them".

[60] Writing for USA Today, Brian Truitt called Adams a "definite contender" for the Oscar for Best Actress, saying she was "spectacular in giving Louise the right emotional balance".

[67] Conversely, Forrest Wickman of Slate had a more mixed opinion of the film, praising the cinematography and musical score, but writing that he thought it was similar to Christopher Nolan's "only intermittently stellar" Interstellar, and criticizing the dialogue as "clunky".

[68] Rex Reed, writing for the New York Observer, gave the film one out of four, calling it Villeneuve's "latest exercise in pretentious poopery"[69] and referring to a lack of action in the storyline.

[71] Numerous other publications and websites, including io9,[72] Den of Geek,[73] Mir Fantastiki,[74] The Atlantic,[75] Blastr,[76] and Digital Trends[77] named Arrival the best film of 2016.