Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End Gets The Greenlight From Syfy

By Nick Venable | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

childhood's endIf science fiction’s most popular writers were still alive today, they’d be pulling in truckloads of money at this point. (Not that some of them weren’t already wealthy, but still.) Syfy is getting into the Arthur C. Clarke business with an official order for the miniseries Childhood’s End, first announced a couple of weeks ago. Is anybody else besides me just waiting for Syfy to announce that of all their recent pickups have been a joke and they’re actually just going to air Scare Tactics and wrestling for 24 hours a day?

Childhood’s End will be presented as a six-part miniseries executive produced by Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) and mega-producer Mike De Luca (Dracula Untold). To direct the project, the team nabbed British filmmaker Nick Hurran, arguably most notable around these parts for directing The Day of the Doctor, as well as a few other Doctor Who episodes. He was also recently recognized with an Emmy nomination for his work on Sherlock: The Last Vow. Taking on screenwriting duties is Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham.

Syfy president Dave Howe, who has spent most of 2014 filling the network’s future with quality sci-fi fare, calls Childhood’s End “the most ambitious project for Syfy in many years.” Considering this is only one of several highly touted miniseries coming to the network, those are large-looming words.

Childhood’s End is definitely ambitious, don’t get me wrong. Published in 1953, before the Space Race began, the novel centers on an Earth populated by alien Overlords, who have infiltrated the world’s biggest cities not with obvious malicious intent, but with positivity and seeming benevolence. Society is turned into a utopia for the most part, but everything takes a dark turn once the humans realize what the Overlords’ ulterior motives are. It’s a complicated novel, and a six-part miniseries is the perfect way to bring it to television. Parts of this story inspired the later miniseries (and movie and remake TV series) V, but that was only a branch on the tall tree of awesomeness that is Childhood’s End.

Everybody ready to groove for a few seconds?

Childhood’s End is set to premiere on Syfy at some point in 2015. We’ll let you know something more specific when Syfy announces it. That, or we’ll send some Overlords over to your house to deliver the news in person while also stopping all instances of bullfighting.