Syfy has been teasing an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi classic Childhood’s End since 2013, but the project stalled when the network made some programming changes. But according to Deadline, Syfy is gearing back up on what will be a six-hour miniseries.
Producer Michael De Luca (The Social Network) is joined by Akiva Goldsman, who worked on I Am Legend and (the Keanu Reeves) Constantine, as well as contributed to the screenplay for I, Robot. Syfy has also roped in two Doctor Who alums to write and direct—respectively, Matthew Graham (“Fear Her”) and Nick Hurran (“The Angels Take Manhattan” and “The Day of the Doctor,” among other episodes).
Published in 1953, Childhood’s End tells how the peaceful alien Overlords took over Earth to erase war and create a near-utopia… but at global personal cost. Though several adaptations have been attempted, none have yet come to the big screen. Stanley Kubrick was at one point interested, but he and Clarke ended up collaborating on what would become 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’ve got our fingers crossed that Syfy finally gives Childhood’s End the greenlight.
Not sure how this translates to TV. There’s not really one overarching plot, something would have to be completely fabricated to make it work.
Loved the book, but I don’t see how it can be drawn into a 6 part series (assume 1hr/part?)…… as long as it stays true to the book, I am game to check it out!
@2: Normally a 6-hour miniseries means three 2-hour installments, usually airing on consecutive nights.
I’m afraid – afraid? no, terrified – that out of all Arthur C. Clarke’s novels, Childhood’s End strikes me as being the least amenable to transfer to the screen, of any dimension. It’s got at least four intertwining stories, and I don’t think Arthur C. Clarke cared to prioritise amongst them. (He did play a part in the development of an autopilot, at least for landing, so he would not have written the first chapter as a throw-away, not at all …)
Do they have the khonas to show the end. The last line shocked me a made laugh for days.
Handled like “Taken” – two hours a night for three nights – with the first night focused on “Earth and the Overloards”, followed by a two hour episode based on “The Golden Age”, and closing with “The Last Generation” and leaving the door open for focusing on the next book a year from now, I could handle. Making the whole package available on the fourth night via Netflix, with NO COMMERCIALS, taken as a video novel, I’d love. But if a single flying shark shows up and I throw myself at the mercy of “…the new number 2.”
Be seeing you.
@6: Syfy has two separate sources of original programming: one that develops their serious scripted series and miniseries, and a separate one (on the opposite coast, I think) that provides their monster-movie spoofs. The Childhood’s End miniseries, of course, is from the former.
Not even a little bit excited that someone involved with the three stinkers I Am Legend, Constantine, and I, Robot, is attached.
@8: Goldsman has been associated with some duds, yes, but also with some more successful productions (such as Fringe). The thing is, writers have essentially no power in the Hollywood feature industry, and directors and producers are free to have their scripts rewritten however they feel like. And the credited names on a movie are usually just one or two of a larger group of writers who’ve done a bunch of different drafts that are stitched together Frankenstein-style to produce the finished script. So a lot of writers end up with their names on movies that run the gamut from brilliant to awful, because they ultimately aren’t the ones making the decisions. Television, by contrast, is much more of a writers’ medium.
And I actually liked I, Robot. For the type of tentpole action movie it is, it’s a pretty solid thriller, and not half bad as a prequel to the Susan Calvin stories (allowing for a certain Hollywoodization).