The film stars Gary Oldman, Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, and Carla Gugino, and follows a teenage boy, born on Mars, who travels to Earth.
Kendra video calls Nathaniel and Genesis director Tom Chen; she says that Gardner is extremely intelligent and wants him to be allowed to go to Earth.
They are followed by Nathaniel and Kendra, who try to convince Gardner to return to NASA but he runs away with Tulsa and learns the location of the man who married his parents, Shaman Neka.
Nathaniel and Kendra learn that Gardner's body contains dangerously high levels of troponin, indicative of an enlarged heart, which cannot withstand the atmospheric pressure of Earth; he must return to Mars immediately if he is to survive.
Tulsa helps him sneak out of the hospital and they drive to the beach house; they meet the man from Gardner's video who is actually his uncle, not his father.
In 1999, Universal Pictures and Mike Lobell Productions acquired a screenplay, then titled Mainland, about a rebellious teen born on the moon who desired to come to the earth but whose physiology, it was feared, would not be able to survive the transition.
After failed rewrites by Allison Burnett (Autumn in New York), the project was placed on hiatus, as Lobell left Universal for a deal at Castle Rock Entertainment.
[citation needed] On March 13, 2014, an industry source revealed that a science fiction-adventure film titled Out of This World was in development at Relativity Media, scripted by Allan Loeb.
[3] On February 2, 2015, Asa Butterfield was tapped to play the lead character in the film, a teen who was raised on Mars, and who falls in love with a girl on Earth he has been communicating with.
[4] On July 13, 2015, it was announced that Relativity was selling the project to STX Entertainment, in order to reach an agreement with its creditors and avoid having to file for bankruptcy.
The actors Asa Butterfield (20 years old at the time of the film's release) and Britt Robertson (27 at the time) have a seven-year age gap between them, greater than their respective characters (both of whom are around 16 or 17), which caused controversy, but in an interview Robertson explains that the age difference helped with the dynamic of the relationship between Tulsa and Gardner:[10] I don't think Tulsa is really a teenager.
[13] However, Kubo and the Two Strings, Ben-Hur, and War Dogs were all slated for August 19, 2016, and STX Entertainment moved its release date later to December 21, 2016, allowing more time for work on the visual effects.
[1] In North America, The Space Between Us was released alongside Rings and The Comedian, and was projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,812 theaters during its opening weekend.
The site's critical consensus reads, "The Space Between Us strands its star-crossed young lovers in a mind-numbingly vast expanse of shameless cheese that will send all but the most forgiving viewers eye-rolling for the exits.
[23][non-primary source needed] Writing for IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of "C", calling it a "guileless and good-natured sci-fi love story".
[24] Kevin Maher gave a scathing review in The Times, writing that the film is "notable only for some horrendously bad science and a career-low performance from Gary Oldman".