It didn't work - Tyson went to Harvard - but to this day he feels an obligation to carry on Sagan's legacy of educating the public about astronomy.Īll that said, the television landscape is light-years from where it was 30 years ago. Surprisingly, Sagan gave the wide-eyed teenager a personal tour of his lab.
Tyson first met Sagan while considering whether to go to Cornell as an undergraduate.
#Cosmos a spacetime odyssey series
He directs the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, hosts the PBS series Nova Science Now, and even has a weekly radio show about space called "Star Talk."Īstrophysicist and science-popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson has been tapped to host the new Cosmos series. Tyson is an increasingly well-known popularizer of all things astronomical. He's the obvious choice, at least for American audiences. This new journey across space and time will be hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The 13 episodes of Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey will debut in 2013. MacFarlane liked Druyan's concept for an updated version, and he helped her sell the concept to executives at Fox. But he met Druyan a while back, and they appeared together last year on Real Time With Bill Maher. Best known as the creator of the animated sitcoms like Family Guy, MacFarlane doesn't exactly ooze science cred. This time it's the vision of Druyan and her Cosmos Studios, and she'll again be aided by astronomer Steven Soter, a key collaborator for the original show.īut what's really raised eyebrows is the choice of Seth MacFarlane as the new series' director. Late last week, word came that a new version of Cosmos is in the works. Sagan died in 1996, just 62, after a difficult years-long fight with myelodysplasia.Īnn Druyan and Seth MacFarlane have teamed up to create Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, to air in 2013.Ĭosmos Studios (left) Bob Charlotte / PR Photos (right)
#Cosmos a spacetime odyssey movie
But he had a captivating style that helped him propel astronomy to new levels of "cool." He later married Ann Druyan, the show's co-writer, and together they collaborated on other books and the movie adaptation of Contact. Cosmos was a huge hit: it's been seen by an estimated 700 million viewers worldwide, making it the Public Broadcast System's most successful show of all time.īy then Sagan had become an icon, more celebrity than scientist in the minds of many.
With an $6 million budget for filming on 100 locations around the world and an arsenal of state-of-the-art special effects, he largely succeeded. The tightly-scripted production, still viewable on Hulu and YouTube, strove (in Sagan's words) to be "engrossing and captivating to a broad, general audience, while simultaneously portraying science accurately and even conveying something of what makes it tick." Sagan had been disappointed with news coverage of the historic Viking landings on Mars in 1976, and he finally found backing for doing things his way. It was an audacious undertaking at a time when American audiences were still getting used to cable television and seeing Nova each week. Astronomer Carl Sagan, as seen in a publicity photograph for the Cosmos series.
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