Starring an ensemble cast featuring Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Chipo Chung, and Mark Strong, the film takes place in the year 2057, where a group of astronauts aboard the Icarus II are sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun.

Eight international astronauts pilot the Icarus II, a ship fronted with a mirrored stellar bomb designed to reignite the dying star.

Stranded, the four agree to jettison back into Icarus II wearing the only spacesuit and airlock insulation; despite Harvey's protests, Capa is given the suit as the only person who can deploy the payload.

In March 2005, following the completion of Millions (2004),[23] director Danny Boyle was briefly attached to direct 3000 Degrees, a Warner Bros. project about the 1999 Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire in Massachusetts.

Producer Andrew Macdonald, working with Boyle and Garland, pitched the script to 20th Century Fox, who were reluctant to finance the film based on its similarities to the 2002 remake Solaris, which performed dismally for the studio.

Since the preliminary budget at US$40 million was too demanding for Fox Searchlight, Macdonald sought outside financing from British lottery funds, U.K. rebates, and outside investor Ingenious Film Partners.

He also enrolled the cast members in space training and scuba diving, as well as watching films together,[31] such as The Right Stuff (1983) and the documentary For All Mankind (1989).

[37] Garland had wondered about what would result from the Sun's death[38] after reading in an American scientific periodical "an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective".

"[38] Garland brought the script to director Danny Boyle, who enthusiastically took up the project due to his long-time desire to direct a science fiction film set in space.

The director also sought to have the characters experience a psychological journey in which each person is worn mentally, physically, and existentially and is experiencing doubt in their faiths.

[40] To capture the dangers of the voyage that the crew members went through, the director cited Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as influential in "articulating the universe's power".

[41] The story was also written in part to reflect the brilliance and "necessary arrogance" of real life science when the world's scientists are presented with the crisis that threatens Earth.

[26] The time period of the story, 50 years in the future, was chosen to enable the level of technology to advance to the ability to travel to the Sun, but to simultaneously keep a feel of familiarity for the audience.

[47] For example, the science periodical New Scientist said that the nuclear stellar bomb used by the crew would be woefully inadequate to reignite the dying Sun (billions of such devices would be required).

Similarly, solar physicist Anjana Ahuja, a columnist for The Times, commented on the lack of source of artificial gravity on board the spacecraft, saying "Danny Boyle could have achieved the same level of scientific fidelity in Sunshine by giving a calculator to a schoolboy".

[52] To increase the feeling of claustrophobia in Sunshine, Boyle refused to cut back to scenes on Earth, a traditional technique in most films about the planet in jeopardy.

[54] Influences from other science fiction films also included Paul W. S. Anderson's Event Horizon (1997), John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974), and Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1971).

[35] Boyle met with a department within NASA that was focused on the psychology of deep-space travel, and they advised the director that regular Earth routines like preparing one's own food, enjoying its consumption and cleaning up afterwards are activities crucial to an astronaut's sanity.

[31] The helmets were also limited to a horizontal slit for visibility instead of a full-face visor as further consideration toward protecting the characters from the ambient radiation of outer space.

[20] The ship's interior was influenced by the design of a nuclear submarine that filmmakers had visited in Scotland, though the space was larger due to NASA's advice that smaller quarters would adversely affect the crewmembers' sanity.

[20] Cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler provided the idea to render the interior of the ship in the colours of grey, blue, and green, with no reference to orange, red, or yellow.

In a scene where Cillian Murphy's character dreams of falling into the Sun, the actor was placed in a gantry around which 20 assistants rotated an assembly of bright lights.

[30] Karl Hyde of Underworld was influenced by the music of avant garde composer György Ligeti which had been used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

[68][69] However, many found the last reels disappointing, with one critic suggesting the switch to "slasher movie" mode might have been inserted to appease teenage audiences.

[74] In Variety, Derek Elley wrote that the film was "gripping enough with its solid performances, good-looking CGI, underlying tension and resonant, iron-hard digital soundtrack.

"[77] In a primarily negative review, Joanne Kaufman writing for The Wall Street Journal, called the film "a warmed-over stew of sci-fi and gothic horror".

Unenthusiastic, she affirmed, "There are the predictable malfunctions that compromise the space craft, the banal speechifying about the fate of mankind, the issue of who will live and who will die.

"[80] Writing for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis viewed director Boyle as a "first-rate, seemingly sweat-free entertainer" who always "sells the goods smoothly, along with the chills, the laughs and, somewhat less often, the tears."

"[81] Wesley Morris in The Boston Globe mused that if the film didn't "float your boat as a work of science-fiction, action, philosophy, heliocentrism, or staggering visual spectacle (although, it really should), then it certainly succeeds as a parable for cinematic ambition."

While we don't get the ticklish conceit of Scottish profanities in the celestial outer realm, we do get something surprisingly consoling: a deep sense of the humanity that we always carry with us, no matter how far we venture from home.