Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film in Panavision co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Carl Sagan.

It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact.

It also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse.

Four years later, when Drumlin is about to terminate the SETI program at the VLA, Arroway discovers a signal containing a sequence of prime numbers that appears to have originated from the star Vega.

Arroway is a leading candidate until Christian philosopher Palmer Joss, a member of the panel with whom she briefly had a romantic relationship in Puerto Rico, draws attention to her atheism.

Hadden, now residing on the Mir space station and dying of cancer, reveals to Arroway the U.S. government and his company have used a secret contract to build a second Machine in Japan.

Arroway observes a radio array-like structure at Vega, signs of civilization on an alien planet, and a celestial event that makes her ecstatic, until finally finding herself on a beach, similar to a childhood drawing she made of Pensacola, Florida.

That year, Lynda Obst, one of his closest friends, was hired by film producer Peter Guber as a studio executive for his production company, Casablanca FilmWorks.

[8] The characterization of Ellie Arroway was inspired by Jill Tarter, head of Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute; Jodie Foster researched the lead role by meeting her.

In 1982, Guber took Contact to Warner Bros. Pictures, and with the film's development stalled, Sagan started to turn his original idea into a novel, which was published by Simon and Schuster in September 1985.

Goldenberg's second draft rekindled Warner Bros. interest in Contact,[12] and Robert Zemeckis was offered the chance to direct, but he turned down the opportunity[2] in favor of making a film based on the life of Harry Houdini.

[14] Zemeckis recalled:[2] The first script [for Contact] I saw was great until the last page and a half... and then it had the sky open up and these angelic aliens putting on a light show and I said, "That's just not going to work.

This was not the original plan for the film;[2] Zemeckis had initially approached Sidney Poitier to play the president, but the actor turned the role down in favor of The Jackal.

"The weather killed us, so we were going back in and changing it enough so that the skies and colors and times of day all seem roughly the same", commented visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston.

[20] The opening scene is a five-minute CGI sequence, beginning with a view of Earth from high in the exosphere and listening in on numerous radio broadcasts emitting from the planet.

Zemeckis and the production crew also made several visits to the Kennedy Space Center at Merritt Island adjacent to Cape Canaveral, where officials gave them access to sites off-limits to most visitors.

"[11] To keep the question alive whether any of it was real in Arroway's mind, elements such as ocean waves running in reverse and palm tree shadows swaying with sped-up motion were applied.

"[29] These indications consist mostly of visual cues during the "journey" that echo Ellie's experiences earlier in the film (which Ellie believed to be the result of the aliens "downloading [her] thoughts and memories"), but the timing of the message's arrival and its eventual decoding are also highly coincidental: the message was first received shortly before Arroway and her team were to be ejected from the VLA facility and was successfully decoded only by S. R. Hadden (Arroway's only sponsor, who was close to death from cancer) after weeks of failed attempts by the team at the VLA.

[29] Zemeckis stated that he intended the message of the film to be that science and religion can coexist rather than being opposing camps,[29] as shown by the coupling of scientist Arroway with the religious Joss, as well as his acceptance that the "journey" indeed took place.

Among the special features are three audio commentaries: by director Zemeckis and producer Starkey, by visual effects supervisors Ken Ralston and Stephen Rosenbaum, and by star Jodie Foster.

The critical consensus reads, "Contact elucidates stirring scientific concepts and theological inquiry at the expense of satisfying storytelling, making for a brainy blockbuster that engages with its ideas, if not its characters.

[40] Internet reviewer James Berardinelli said that Contact is "one of 1997's finest motion pictures, and is a forceful reminder that Hollywood is still capable of making magic".

Berardinelli likened its awe and spectacle to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, while adding that "If Contact falls short in any area, it's an inability to fully develop all of its many subplots..."[41] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle largely enjoyed the first 90 minutes of Contact but felt that director Robert Zemeckis was too obsessed with visual effects rather than cohesive storytelling for the pivotal climax.

Twelve years later, an article by NASA scientist David S. McKay was published in the journal Science, proposing that the meteorite might contain evidence for microscopic fossils of Martian bacteria (later, a disputed interpretation).

[44][45] The announcement made headlines around the world, and the following day, on August 7, 1996, during a press conference about the news, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, made remarks that were in places sufficiently generic in nature to allow fragments of his videotaped statement to be included in Contact, implying that Clinton was ostensibly speaking about contact with extraterrestrial life, congruent with the film's story:[46] Good afternoon.

But clearly, the fact that something of this magnitude is being explored is another vindication ...[film scene performed over recording, with dialogue obscuring Clinton's remarks and creating a gap]...

[47]Later in the film, a separate fragment of generic remarks by President Clinton, speaking about Saddam Hussein and Iraq at a different press conference in October 1994, was lifted out of context and inserted into Contact:[48] I would encourage you not to inflame this situation beyond the facts.

We are monitoring what has actually happened.On July 14, 1997, three days after the film opened in the United States, Warner Bros. received a letter from White House Counsel Charles Ruff protesting against the use of Clinton's digitally-composited appearance.

No legal action was planned; the White House Counsel simply wanted to send a message to Hollywood to avoid unauthorized uses of the President's image.

Zemeckis said that because of the two radically different assertions, the truth is unknown, but he left the suicide pill scene in the movie, as it seemed more suspenseful that way, and it was also in line with Sagan's beliefs and vision of the film.