Posts Tagged ‘sherlock’

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS film adaptation to star Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close

The book cover for THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS by M R Carey, to be adapted to film by Sherlock director Colm McCarthy
  • Buy the Book
  • US
  • UK

We’re delighted to share some news on the upcoming film adaptation of THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS by M. R . Carey. The film is to star Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close, and is to be directed by Colm McCarthy – best known for his work on Sherlock, Peaky Blinders and Doctor Who.

Here is a press release which has gone out today from Altitude Film Entertainment:

 

ALTITUDE BOARDS ‘SHE WHO BRINGS GIFTS’ TO BE DIRECTED BY COLM MCCARTHY AND STARRING GEMMA ARTERTON, PADDY CONSIDINE AND GLENN CLOSE

Feature from bestselling Mike Carey novel marks highly anticipated feature debut by director Colm McCarthy

LONDON – Monday 23 March 2015. Altitude Film Sales has boarded SHE WHO BRINGS GIFTS, one of last year’s Brit List selected screenplays, adapted by acclaimed novelist M. R. Carey from his bestselling novel The Girl with all the Gifts.

Director Colm McCarthy lauded helmer of hit British TV shows including Peaky Blinders starring Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy, Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, Doctor Who, Endeavour and The Tudors, will direct his first major feature. The cast includes Gemma Arterton (Tamara Drewe, The Disappearance of Alice Creed) who is currently starring in Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices following her West End musical stage debut in Made in Dagenham; Paddy Considine from BAFTA-winning British hit Pride, a BAFTA award-winning director for Tyrannosaur and soon to be seen in Macbeth with Michael Fassbender; and the multi-award-winning and six-time Oscar® nominated actress Glenn Close, soon to be seen in Tim Blake Nelson’s Anesthesia, Bjorn Runge’s The Wife, last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy and a just-completed starring run on Broadway in A Delicate Balance.

Mike Carey first came to prominence within the world of comic books, writing the Lucifer series at DC Vertigo, Hellblazer for DC, X-Men, Fantastic Four and adapting Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow for Marvel amongst other titles. He also wrote The Unwritten which has made the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list and was awarded Comic Con’s Inkpot Award in 2012. More recently, Carey has moved into prose fiction with thrillers such as The Dead Sea Deception (under the pseudonym of Adam Blake), fantasy novels The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness and the Felix Castor novels. The Girl with all the Gifts is his most recent novel, published in 2014 to critical acclaim and attracting multitudes of fans including writer-director Joss Whedon who proclaimed it to be: “Heartfelt, remorseless and painfully human . . . as fresh as it is terrifying. A jewel.”

SHE WHO BRINGS GIFTS is due to shoot in the UK in May 2015 and is produced by Camille Gatin, co-producer of James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer and Ricky Gervais’s Special Correspondents co-starring Eric Bana, and Angus Lamont, producer of the Berlin Competition Jury award-winning ’71 directed by Yann Demange. The feature has been developed with the support of the BFI Film Fund.

SHE WHO BRINGS GIFTS is the story of Melanie, a girl who is full of questions about the world. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into a wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite. But they don’t laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.

Camille Gatin says, “It’s hugely exciting to combine Mike Carey’s truly original script and Colm McCarthy’s dynamic yet sensitive style, with such a terrific cast.” (more…)

Happy Birthday Arthur Conan Doyle!

With THE RED PLAGUE AFFAIR (UK|US|ANZ) released so close to the birthdate of Arthur Conan Doyle (that’s today!), and its two Victorian sleuths owing much to Sherlock Holmes (after all, which fictional detectives do not?) we asked the author, Lilith Saintcrow, to tell us a bit about Doyle’s influence on her work.

THE RED PLAGUE AFFAIR is the second of Bannon and Clare’s adventures and the follow up to THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR. Listen to the audiobooks here.

the cover of steampunk novel The Red Plague Affair, showing Bannon and Clare
Bannon and Clare – ready for action.

For a long time, I didn’t even know Sherlock Holmes existed. Instead, I loved another boy.

His name was Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown.

I had two battered, ancient Encyclopedia Brown collections when I was a kid, probably from some garage sale or another. Most of the stories have receded into the mist that is my bad memory for everything before I was 20, but I remember a particular story where Leroy figured out an ambulance was the getaway vehicle because the stupid criminals put someone in it feet-first.

I was completely enchanted by the idea that a regular kid could, just by observation, change the course of events. This seemed a superpower anyone was capable of acquiring, with enough stubborn persistence and attention to detail. I mean, flight and superstrength are pretty badass, but I think most kids start suspecting neither are truly available outside their imaginations pretty early on.

I am not sure when I first began to suspect that my dear Leroy was an homage to someone else. It was probably at the point that Young Sherlock Holmes blazed into my consciousness, and I immediately marched into the library and started looking for “based on the stories of.”

Imagine my surprise upon meeting Holmes and Watson, two middle-aged men decidedly less attractive to the twelve-year-old girl I was. Arthur Conan Doyle’s prose style gave me a little difficulty, but much less than Shakespeare and only a little more than Louisa May Alcott. Plus, there were murders. Chases. A network of street kids bringing information. Cocaine. Music. Horses.

Irene Adler. (more…)

Creating a good protagonist, and why James Bond is a permanent teenager . . .

Chris Bunch and Allan Cole wrote the Sten Chronicles –  one of the truly classic military science fiction series. As of this week, you can now buy the entire series (that’s eight books!) in these three gorgeous Orbit omnibus editions in print and ebook – that’s BATTLECRY (UK|ANZ), JUGGERNAUT (UK|ANZ) and DEATH MATCH (UK|ANZ).

Read on to find out in Allan’s words how he and Chris created the eponymous Sten, and to find out a bit more about how to come up with a multi-book protagonist of your own.

all three omnibuses in the Sten series of space opera adventures

Chris Bunch and I went about breaking into book-world with the same fervor that we attacked Hollywood. Young and dumb as we were, we thought we could conjure up the key to literary success that has eluded countless wannabe writers, past, present and future.

The first thing, we decided, was that if we came up with a series – instead of a standalone novel – there was more of a chance that all the books would remain in print. A little bit true at the time, but mostly wishful thinking these days.

Then we looked at the genre markets. Westerns? We dearly loved Westerns. But in those days – both in books and the movies – the Oater, as they called it, was done. Westerns just weren’t selling.

Detectives, then? We were ardent fans of Chandler and Hammett – all the hard boiled guys. Again, at the time mysteries and detective stories had a limited, if passionate, audience. A flurry of rack sales, then the local library, where the sale of one book serves a legion of readers, but does not impress your banker one damn bit.

We finally settled on Science Fiction – fantasy was still waiting for Terry Brooks to break that genre out of the doldrums. Plus we had been ardent science fiction readers since childhood.

Next, we examined the nature of book series. In our opinion, there was a tendency for writers to grow to despise their main characters after a few books.

Sir Arthur came to hate Holmes so much that he killed him. The storm over that literary assassination eventually led to Holmes’ miraculous revival. Agatha Christie loathed Poirot, but wisely let him live. Ian Fleming killed James Bond in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, only to resurrect 007 in DR. NO to appease his publishers and fans. And so on. There are countless examples. (more…)

The Iron Wyrm Affair: Can you Deduce like a Detective?

Bannon and Clare stand ready to solve another mystery!THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR (UK | US | ANZ) is a steampunk fantasy about what happens when all the geniuses of Londinium are targeted by a vicious killer. The sorceress Emma Bannon and one of the last remaining such geniuses, Archibald Clare, must struggle to solve the mystery and stay alive!

Archie’s unnatural deductive faculties are why he’s in danger – and of course Emma’s not too bad at solving mysteries herself! Can you deduce like a Victorian detective? Read on to try your skills . . .

Question: Although those on a mission for the crown have little time for frivolous parlour games, there’s no harm in keeping one’s deductive faculties sharp. Bannon and Clare have decided to test each other over the dessert course . . . Emma tells Archibald about an American gentleman and his son who were involved in an industrial accident in one of Londinium’s clockhorse factories. The man was killed, but the son lived and was rushed to St. Thomas’s Hospital. The head surgeon glanced at the boy and confessed, “I cannot operate upon this patient – he is my son!” How could this be?

Highlight the space below to reveal the answer:
Archie tells Emma that the doctor was the young gentleman’s mother.

Question: Archibald tells Emma about a Grecquean island where those from the North side of the island always lie, and those from the South always tell the truth.  Archie was sampling the cuisine at a local restaurant when three men approached him. The first man told Archie that himself and his compatriots were from the North. The second man said ‘only one of us is from the South’. The third man said nothing at all. Archibald asks Emma which of the men were from the North.

Highlight the space below to reveal the answer:
Emma knows that only the second man was from the South, but scolds Archie for the frankly preposterous nature of his riddle.

Question: Emma regales Archibald with the details of her visit to a charming country estate while investigating its owner for crimes against Queen Victrix. Although the owner was not at home, as Emma was returning to her carriage a vicious guard dog lunged at her. Although it could not reach her as its chain was attached to a tree, it followed her every move, growling horribly, and had access to both of her carriage doors. Although her bodyguard Mikal was keen to shoot it for threatening his mistress, Emma sternly told him to put away his pistol as she could see a way back to her carriage without the use of force or magic. What did she do?

Highlight the space below to reveal the answer:
Archibald guessed correctly that Emma led the dog around its tree until the chain had been shortened enough that she could reach her carriage.

Question: Inspired by Emma’s canine riddle, Archie tells her about the time a hired hansom was conveying him through the streets of Londinium. The hansom came to a street painted entirely black. The gas lamps were broken, no doubt by flashboys, and neither Archie nor the coachman were carrying lanterns. Nevertheless, the coachman managed to swerve in time to avoid the entirely black dog that ran out on the road in front of them. How could he have seen the dog in time?

Highlight the space below to reveal the answer:
Happily for the dog, Emma concludes, it was daylight.

 How did you do? Share some of your favourite riddles with us in the comments . . .