Footage from seven ongoing NASA space missions provide hyper-realistic scenery for 3-D animated film Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, which debuts Saturday at the DragonCon sci-fi convention in Atlanta.
For added star power, Quantum producer Harry Kloor wrangled William Shatner, Chris Pine, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones and Hayden Christensen for the voice cast.
Besides guys that pretend to be outer-space adventurers, Quantum also includes features actress Amanda Peet (Syriana, 2012). See exclusive videos of Pine and Peet talking about their participation in Quantum Quest below.
Pine, who played Captain Kirk in 2009’s Star Trek movie, portrays a photon named Dave in Quantum Quest. In the promo clip below, shared exclusively with Wired.com in advance of the DragonCon presentation, he says he enjoyed doing voice work on the educational animated movie.
“There was always one bench filled with dudes in sweat pants who hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and they always looked like they were having the most fun,” Pine says.
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong also appears in Quantum Quest, for the first time lending his voice to an animated movie in the role of meteorite hunter Jack Doohan.
Kloor met Armstrong at Purdue University while earning Ph.D. degrees in physics and chemistry. “When I asked Neil if he wanted to promote science to the public through a science fiction film as a means to reach all those people who shy away from traditional science and educational or edutainment films, he read the script and liked the approach,” Kloor told Wired.com in an e-mail.
In the final promo clip, Peet — who voices a green-skinned, bulbous-headed “kick-ass neutrino ranger,” as Kloor describes it, drops a little science, “Millions of neutrinos are passing through your body right now,” she says.
Peet also offers a shout out to book-smart geeks: “Dumb jock thing? Not cool.”
Following Saturday’s 8:30 p.m. DragonCon screening in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis’ Atrium Ballroom, Kloor will appear with Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants) and others at the “Captain Kirks vs. Darth Vaders: The Inside Stories Behind the Making of Quantum Quest” panel.
Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, written and co-directed by Kloor, is slated for release in large-format 3-D theaters in late 2010.
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