10. Contact
Interstellar isnt the first sci-fi film to draw inspiration from renowned physicist Kip Thorne, include Lynda Obst as a producer and feature Matthew McConaughey: that honour belongs to Contact. The 1997 Robert Zemeckis film starred Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway, a scientist working for a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme that, er, searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. After receiving a signal from a far-flung star, Arroway decodes the information relayed by the signal and discovers blueprints for a complex machine that might enable mankind to better explore space and meet some of its other inhabitants. The American astronomer, cosmologist and author Carl Sagan wrote the novel upon which the film was based and also had a hand in developing the film treatment for Obst. Sagans ideas incorporated fellow scientist Kip Thorne's theories of wormhole space travel into the plot, and a decade later Obst and Thorne collaborated on an idea exploring how wormhole travel could affect mankind. Their concept piqued the interest of Steven Spielberg before the project fell into the hands of Christopher Nolan, and the end product will be with us in less than a week. Whether or not extraterrestrial contact plays any part in Interstellar remains to be seen, but the ground it shares with Contact in scientific and thematic terms is plain to see.