Exciting news from Cannes: The movie adaptation of M.R. Carey’s novel The Girl With All the Gifts gets a distributor! According to Variety, Saban Films is closing a deal to buy the U.S. distribution rights to the film, which was financed by the British Film Institute and Creative England. The news coincided with the release of the first two photos from the film, starring Gemma Arterton as the schoolteacher who wants to protect the eponymous gifted girl and Glenn Close as the doctor who wants to study her (even if that means cutting into her brain).
Here’s the novel summary, from Orbit Books:
Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.
While Dr. Caldwell (Close) is able to maintain some distance from Melanie and the other children like her, Miss Justineau (Arterton) can’t help but form a bond with the charges she teaches in their underground bunker. When disaster strikes, the two must team up—along with Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine)—to escape the diseased creatures chasing them and find a cure. Newcomer Sennia Nanua plays Melanie.
The studio also released a photo of one of the don’t-call-them-zombie children roaming the postapocalyptic countryside:
And here’s an older image of Melanie herself, from when the movie was still called She Who Brings Gifts:
The author, who adapted Gifts to screenplay, recently released his second novel as M.R. Carey—not a sequel, but a supernatural thriller, Fellside. He has also written several novels as Mike Carey.
