Meteor is a 1979 American science fiction disaster film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood.

The film's premise, which follows a group of scientists struggling with Cold War politics after an asteroid is detected to be on a collision course with Earth, was inspired by a 1967 MIT report, Project Icarus.

The international cast also includes Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda.

While the United States government engages in political maneuvering, the smaller asteroid fragments preceding the main body wreak havoc on the planet, revealing the threat.

Both satellites are coordinated and turned toward the incoming large asteroid as smaller fragments continue to strike the planet, causing great damage, including a deadly avalanche in the Swiss Alps and a tsunami that devastates Hong Kong.

The splinter impacts the city, destroying the top half of the World Trade Center twin towers in a direct hit, and creating a large crater in Central Park.

Theodore R. Parvin received the idea for the story from a Saturday Review article by Isaac Asimov about a meteor hitting a major city in the United States.

However, Ronald Neame and Sean Connery disliked both North's script and a rewrite by Steven Bach, so Stanley Mann was hired to completely re-write the screenplay.

[10] Neame cast Natalie Wood as Tatiana because she was the daughter of Russian immigrants, and she worked with George Rubinstein to perfect a Leningrad accent.

Alec Guinness, Yul Brynner, Rod Steiger, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas, Theodore Bikel, Richard Burton and Orson Welles were each considered for the role of Dr. Dubov.

Principal photography took place from October 31, 1977, to January 27, 1978, mainly at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, with some location filming in Washington, D.C., St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.

They were also fired and replaced by Paul Kassler and Rob Balack, who were asked to complete the special effects, again with what money remained in the budget (and just two months before the film's release).

In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "standard disaster fare", adding that "the suspense is sludgy and the character development nil".

The big meteor in the picture, hurtling toward Earth at 30,000 miles an hour, looks like something I recently found at the bottom of my refrigerator — green bread.

"[14] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "against its own odds, it is—for what it intends to be—uninspired but competent, efficient, commercial and entertaining, with some random moments that are very nice indeed.

"[18] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 5% based on 19 reviews, with the site's consensus being: "Meteor is a flimsy flick with too much boring dialogue and not enough destruction.