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Sphere
A spacecraft is discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, presumed to be at least 300 years old and of alien origin. A crack team of scientists and experts is assembled and taken to the ocean floor to investigate. However, the ship is not as it seems and when a giant perfect sphere is discovered in the cargo bay, things begin to fall apart.
1998 · Directed by Barry Levinson · 134 min · Science Fiction · Mystery · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 10 frames
Tagline
Terror can fill any space.
Plot
A spacecraft presumed to be of alien origin is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, estimated to have been there for nearly 300 years. A team of experts, including marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin, mathematician Dr. Harry Adams, astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding, psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman and U.S. Navy Captain Harold Barnes, is assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state-of-the-art underwater living environment located near the spacecraft.
Examining the spacecraft, the team is perplexed to learn it is not alien at all but rather American in origin. However, its technology far surpasses any in the present day. The ship's computer logs cryptically suggest a mission that originated either in the distant past or future but the team deduces that the long-dead crew was tasked with collecting an item of scientific importance.
Norman and Beth discover the ship's logs, with the last entry noting an "unknown event". A holographic reenactment of the event reveals that hundreds of years in the future, the ship encountered a black hole, which apparently led to a crash landing in the ocean, back in the 1700s. Soon after, Norman and the others stumble on a large, yet perfect sphere hovering in the cargo bay. They cannot find any way to probe the inside of the sphere, as the fluid surface seems to be impenetrable. On observation, Norman ominously notes that the sphere reflects everything in the room, except them.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Stephen Hauser, Paul Attanasio
- Cinematography: Adam Greenberg
- Edited by: Stu Linder
- Music: Elliot Goldenthal
- Production design: Norman Reynolds
- Produced by: Michael Crichton, Barry Levinson, Andrew Wald
Cast
- Dustin Hoffman as Dr. Norman Goodman
- Sharon Stone as Dr. Elizabeth 'Beth' Halperin
- Samuel L. Jackson as Dr. Harry Adams
- Peter Coyote as Captain Harold C. Barnes
- Liev Schreiber as Dr. Ted Fielding
- Queen Latifah as Alice 'Teeny' Fletcher
- Marga Gómez as Jane Edmunds
- Huey Lewis as Helicopter Pilot
- Bernard Hocke as Seaman
- James Pickens Jr. as O.S.S.A. Instructor
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Warner Bros. Pictures, Punch Productions, Baltimore Pictures, Constant c Productions
- Budget: $80,000,000
- Box office: $37,020,277
- Themes: space marine, based on novel or book, ocean, extraterrestrial technology, paranoia, time travel, time bomb, alien, psychologist, ocean floor
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