Author M.R. Carey has shared the first trailer for The Girl With All the Gifts, Warner Bros’ adaptation of his 2014 novel about a very special girl guarded by scientists, soldiers, and a doting teacher in post-apocalyptic Britain. Every morning, Melanie (Sennia Nanua) dutifully straps herself in to a wheelchair to attend class with other children, also restrained, under the tutelage of their beloved Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton). But beyond the walls of their abandoned army base, infected “hungries” are trying to break in. Within those walls, Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) is testing a cure, but she needs a very particular ingredient.
The trailer looks to be a pretty faithful adaptation of Carey’s book, following Melanie, Miss Justineau, Dr. Caldwell, and Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine) from the base to discovering the truth behind the infection and fighting hungries along the way. The only negative reaction so far seems to be the online backlash regarding the whitewashing of Miss Justineau (who is clearly described as a woman of color in the text).
On the plus side, newcomer Sennia Nanua looks as if she will give a powerful performance as the eponymous girl with all the gifts. Watch the trailer:
The Girl With All the Gifts will be released September 23 in the UK and (according to Carey) around the same time in the US.
I’ve said this on Facebook and I’ll say it here again:
Great book.
Looks like it’ll be a great movie.
WHAT A SHITTY TRAILER.
I had to unmark all my friends who haven’t read the book from my previous comment, as the trailer basically SHOWS THE ENTIRE MOVIE.
Honestly, if you haven’t read the book and you watch the trailer, don’t even bother reading.
I absolutely loved the book, and enjoyed the way Carey injected a Lovecraftian trope of trying to trace the source of the horrors down to its roots in science. Carey also did a excellent job of fleshing out the few main characters, giving them all justifiable motivations where no one was morally black or white. I fear that the film is going to paint the characters in broader brush strokes, eliminating the nuances that lent this book a terrifying sense of realism. Hopefully I’m wrong, but this seems like a film that would be relatively easy to shoot at surface level, and miss its subtleties entirely.
I think that this looks great and I like the actors involved, but I’m concerned about some changes in the underlying tone and messages of the movie with the change in races – Miss Justineau who is black in the books, is white here; and Melanie is black here and a white – very fair child – in the books. Specifically – Melanie worshipping Miss Justineau as the most beautiful etc woman in the world, and the association of a little black girl with animalistic-cannibalistic urges that are nearly impossible to control. I think there was a chance to show a black woman be portrayed as the epitome of beauty to a little white girl, and to avoid depicting a little black girl as a flesh eating thing that is emphatically described as “not a person.”
Just saying.