Children of Men

When I saw this I did a little mental jig of joy. (ht: Beryl)

harlie Hunnam is in negotiations to join Alfonso Cuaron's SF movie The Children of Men for Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Clive Owen and Julianne Moore already have been cast in the film adaptation of the book by P.D. James.

Marc Abraham and Eric Newman are producing for Strike Entertainment, while Hilary Shor is producing for Hit & Run Prods.

The story is set in the near future, when mankind has lost the ability to reproduce, and the world is rocked by the news that the world's youngest person, who is 18, has died.

Hunnam will play Patric, a young rebel member of the Five Fishes group, which is trying to incite chaos, the trade paper reported.

I really enjoyed the book by PD James. The book follows Theo Farron, an Oxford don, in a near future when the human race has stopped having children; not just stopped, unable to have children. James, better known for her Adam Dagliesh mystery series, brilliantly portrays what children mean to society. What happens when hope is taken away and what happens when people are confronted with the loss of something that they marginalized until it was gone.

Whenever I read about the population vacuum of European countries my mind flashes to this book. When I read this story about the reimergence of wild creatures, the parallels leapt to my mind. As native populations in European countries dwindle, lands that have for long centuries sustained men are no longer used.

In her book James writes thru Theo Farron:

"Some European countries began to pursue a vigorous campaign t o encourage the birth of children, but most of us thought the fall was desirable, even necessary. We were polluting the planet with our numbers; if we were breeding less it was to be welcomed. Most of the concern was less about a falling population than about the wish of nations to maintain their own people, their own culture, their own race, to breed sufficient young to maintain their economic structures. But as I remember it, no one suggested that the fertility of the human race was dramatically changing. When Omega came it came with dramatic suddenness and was received with incredulity."

I do hope that this a faithful adaptation of the book. If Clive Owen (Arthur in 2004's King Arthur) is slated as Theo and Julianne Moore is cast opposite him as Julian that is a step in the right direction. Let us hope they have the courage to explore the themes of the book instead of minimalizing them for a shoot 'em up.