Skip to main content

Sci-fi drama 'Arrival' set to return to theaters, thanks to 8 Oscar nominations

Arrival
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Director Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was already one of 2016’s most critically acclaimed films, but the eight Academy Award nominations it received this week have spurred an official rerelease of the movie in theaters.

Paramount Pictures announced plans to screen Arrival in theaters again, beginning Friday, January 27. The new screenings will feature some additional footage and behind-the-scenes features only available at the screenings (which will likely be available as bonus features on some of the home-entertainment releases for the film later this year). It’s unknown how long the rerelease will last, but the duration of its second run in theaters will likely be determined by box-office numbers.

Recommended Videos

Directed by Villeneuve, Arrival casts Amy Adams as a linguist tasked with establishing communication with mysterious aliens who have arrived on Earth. With the aliens touching down at locations all around the world, Adams’ character is in a race against time to find out why they are here and avert the sort of global catastrophe that can result from a misunderstanding with extraterrestrial visitors.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The film is based on Ted Chiang’s novel Story of Your Life, and was adapted for the screen by Eric Heisserer.

Along with Adams in the lead role, the film features Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Mark O’Brien in supporting roles. The film earned $95.6 million in U.S. theaters during its initial run and $163.1 million worldwide.

Arrival was nominated in the coveted Best Picture category for this year’s Academy Awards, and also received nominations for Villeneuve in the Best Director category, Heisserer in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, and additional nominations for cinematography, film editing, production design, sound mixing, and sound editing.

Widely perceived as a long-shot to win any of the major awards at this year’s Oscars ceremony, Arrival still tied with the critically praised drama Moonlight for the second-highest number of nominations this year — a year that also saw Damien Chazelle’s modern musical La La Land tie for the most nominations in Academy Awards history — 14.

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
8 best sci-fi video games to play if you liked Apple TV+’s hit show Silo
The courier in his nuclear gear and holding his gun in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

Adapted from author Hugh Howey's series of books, showrunner Graham Yost's Silo wrapped up an impressive first season on Apple TV+. The Rebecca Ferguson-led sci-fi thriller brought to screen a captivating world filled with tantalizing mysteries, but there are plenty of video games for fans to get more of their dystopian fix.

These kinds of worlds and stories are ripe for immersion and deeply layered worldbuilding, as many talented developer studios have made their mark on the dystopian sci-fi subgenre. From Bethesda Game Studios' iconic Fallout series to 2K's (now Irrational Games) groundbreaking BioShock, these titles all have elements that fans of Apple TV+'s Silo should enjoy.
Fallout 3 (2008)

Read more
Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once directors on creating 2022’s most moving sci-fi film
The Daniels discuss a scene on the set of Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a lot of things: A sci-fi adventure, a martial arts action movie, an absurdist comedy, and now, an Oscar-winning Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars. But above all else, it’s a film about one family and its matriarch, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who embarks on a trip through the multiverse that tests her relationships with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and her father (James Hong). It’s a personal and intimate journey, and seeing how directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (together, they are known as the “Daniels”) use a massive sci-fi adventure to tell it is one of the many great joys the film has to offer.

It’s an achievement that begins with the film’s opening shot, which shows Evelyn, Waymond, and Joy dancing and singing together. It’s a beautiful moment, but it’s also shown through the reflection of a living room mirror, and therein lies the brilliance of the shot itself. In a film about the multiverse, the opening image of Everything Everywhere All at Once shows viewers just the first of many reflections of Evelyn, Waymond, and Joy that they’ll meet over the course of its story.

Read more
5 Oscar-winning sci-fi movies you should watch
Interview: Director Alex Garland on Ex Machina

Everyone knows the Academy Awards have a bias against certain genres. Biopics, dramas, and epics are like catnip to voters, and the more tears a voter sheds, the more likely it is that they will vote for it. As a result, genres like horror and sci-fi rarely get recognized by the organization outside of technical categories like Visual Effects or Sound.

With Everything Everywhere All at Once poised to be the first science fiction film to win Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars, it's time to look back at the few sci-fi films besides 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars that managed to break through and win the coveted Academy Award in one or multiple categories. From a far-out adventure into the human body to a modern parable about the dangers of artificial intelligence, these films won Oscars for a reason and should be watched by an appreciative audience.

Read more