What could you do in fifty-seven seconds? Apparently Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) can do quite a bit. Along with Morgan Freeman (Batman Begins, above), Hutcherson is set to star in 57 Seconds, a movie adaptation of a short story by British writer E.C. Tubb (the Dumarest series). Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood) will direct the adaptation, which is written by Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore).
News reports don’t name the story being adapted, but it seems likely that the film plays fast and loose with a concept from Tubb’s “Lucifer!” first published in Visions of Tomorrow #3 in 1969—or “Fallen Angel,” a revised 1999 version of the story.
In “Lucifer!” an unscrupulous morgue attendant steals a powerful ring from a dead man’s hand—a ring that allows the bearer to travel fifty-seven seconds into the past. In 57 Seconds, it’s a tech blogger named Franklin (Hutcherson) who gets his hands on the ring after he stops an attack on tech guru Anton Burrell (Freeman).
The Hollywood Reporter says, “Driven by revenge and with Burrell’s support, Franklin uses the ring to dismantle the pharmaceutical company responsible for his sister’s death. But he soon gets entangled in a treacherous and brutal chain of events with much more than his own destiny at stake.”
From whence comes this magical ring? Is it tech or magic? Why fifty-seven seconds? Unless you want to read the original story, you’ll have to wait more than a minute to find out: 57 Seconds starts filming in April in Louisiana, and doesn’t have a release date yet.
Buy the Book
Seasonal Fears
