Trailer
Plot summary
David Randall, a freelance pilot, is hired to bring a secret package from South Africa to Dr. Cole Hendron at the Cosmos Observatory in New York, the case chained to his wrist. Joyce Hendron meets him at Idlewild Airport and drives him there, where the photographs inside the package confirm what Dr. Emery Bronson has calculated: a rogue star called Bellus and its planet Zyra are coming toward the solar system. Zyra's close pass will churn the seas and set off earthquakes, and nineteen days afterward Bellus will strike the Earth. Hendron lays the findings before the United Nations, where other astronomers dispute them, and before Congress, which refuses to pay for the arks he wants to build.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about When Worlds Collide (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Adviser Chesley Bonestell designed the space ark in When Worlds Collide and its closing sunrise landscape on Zyra. Because of budget and time constraints, the director used Bonestell's color sketch for that final scene instead of a finished matte painting.- Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was the first actor considered for the role of pilot Dave Randall in When Worlds Collide, but the part finally went to Richard Derr.
- The 1998 film Deep Impact began as a combination of a remake of When Worlds Collide and an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 1993 novel The Hammer of God, and the finished film acknowledged neither source.
