By 
Robbie Graham 
Alien contact movie based on “factual 
data” seeks funding 
 
A new independent film 
about alien contact based on “factual data” is seeking public funding. According 
to io9.com, the movie – titled Ellipse – “is about a girl who is 
destined to be an astrophysicist. It's also about an Enlightenment-era woman who 
helped discover longitude. And it's about aliens. Plus, it's made by seasoned SF 
filmmakers in collaboration with scientists at the Royal Observatory 
Greenwich.” 
The filmmakers behind 
Ellipse describe it as 
follows:
“Leo is from another 
world, many light years from Earth. He is a player in an intergalactic game, 
travelling to other worlds and planting the seed of knowledge about whether we 
are alone in the universe.
On Earth he has tried 
many times to point us toward the truth but our technology and the recipients of 
his 'sharing' have not been able to take the steps needed to unlock the 
secret.
Then he finds Ro, an 
exceptionally bright girl who he draws into the game. She becomes fated to study 
astrophysics and, as a grown up astronomer, her research leads her to identify a 
particular comet and send a lander to explore it…
The film begins over 
400 years ago at The Queen's House. We meet Louise de Kerouaille, a mistress to 
Charles II. She was responsible for convincing the King to create the 
observatory as a way to map the stars and solve the problem of longitude, an 
amazing woman.
Next, the whole of 
Ro's study and the data seen in the film from the alien world is from NASA's 
Kepler mission and the amazing app called EXOPLANET. Hanno Rein, from the 
Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton has chosen several stars with 
exoplanets to be discussed on screen and in the educational pack we are 
producing to support the film for schools, this will be written by Dr Lewis 
Dartnell and Marek Kukula, the Public Astronomer at the 
ROG…
Also, the whole film 
is being made in collaboration with the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of the 
Prime Meridian.” 
Ellipse needs £12,000 to get off the ground. If you want to support this 
movie, you can make a donation here. 
 
‘Jupiter Ascending’ 
gets a release date
Warner Bros. has announced that its epic (and, by the 
sounds of it, completely bonkers) science-fiction movie Jupiter Ascending will be released 
on July 25, 2014.  
Directed by the Wachowski brothers 
(Cloud Atlas, The 
Matrix) and starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, 
and Sean Bean, Jupiter 
Ascending “focuses on higher forms of life who are watching us from 
other worlds. Kunis will play a Russian immigrant who is busily scrubbing 
toilets for a living. Unbeknownst to her, she actually possesses the same 
perfect genetic makeup as the Queen of the Universe and is therefore a threat to 
her otherwise immortal rule.”
‘Defiance’: SyFy’s new alien drama reviewed 
 The hotly-anticipated 
(exopolitical?) TV series Defiance will premiere on SyFy on 
April 15. io9.com has already seen the first 
three episodes and has delivered its verdict:
The hotly-anticipated 
(exopolitical?) TV series Defiance will premiere on SyFy on 
April 15. io9.com has already seen the first 
three episodes and has delivered its verdict: 
“On a Syfy scale of 
Battlestar Galactica to Piranhaconda, Defiance is in the upper 
middle. It's got heaps of promise and an amazing cast… It's got a lot of heart 
and so far is a lot of fun.”
For the full, 
spoiler-free review of Defiance – which is set on Earth 30 
years after a collective of five alien races arrives, turning our civilization 
upside down – head on over to io9.com. 
‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ 
TV show
DreamWorks Animation's Monsters vs. Aliens is headed to the 
small screen as a Nickelodeon TV 
series.
Based on the 2009 feature film, Monsters vs. Aliens tells the story 
of a team of monsters brought together to protect the Earth from interstellar 
threats.
The pilot episode – titled "Welcome to Area Fifty-Something" – 
will premiere on March 23, with the series proper beginning April 
6.
Check out the series trailer here...