Syfy to Develop CHILDHOOD'S END

Syfy president Dave Howe announced that the network will develop Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End as a six-hour miniseries to bow in 2015. Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend, A Beautiful Mind) and Mike De Luca (Captain Phillips, The Social Network) are attached as executive producers, with a script by Matthew Graham (Life on Mars). The miniseries will be directed by Nick Hurran, who received a 2014 Emmy Award nomination for Sherlock: His Last Vow and a Hugo Award nomination for Doctor Who.

Howe said, “As we aggressively develop scripted programming over a diverse creative landscape, we want our content to reflect the greatest sci-fi stories from the past and the present. The powerful themes of Childhood’s End, from the fearsome price of peace and prosperity, to the very question of what constitutes a human being, remain fascinating and timeless.  This will be the most ambitious project for Syfy in many years.”

First published in 1953, Childhood’s End chronicles the peaceful invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival on the planet brings an end to war and turns Earth into a near-utopia under a world government — at the eventual cost of humanity’s identity. The tale began as the short story “Guardian Angel” (1946), which Clarke expanded as the first part of the 1952 novel Earth and the Overlords, which finally developed into Childhood’s End. It was Clarke’s first successful novel, with its first printing selling out within two months. Clarke himself regarded Childhood’s End as one of his favorites.

Director Stanly Kubrick once considered an adaptation, but opted to work with Clarke on 2001: A Space Odyssey instead, and the BBC produced a two-hour radio adaptation in 1997.