Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein have been announced for a project called The Earthling. These two filmmakers were responsible for this year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, the sixth film in a 25-year-old franchise, which was well-received critically and especially at the box office. Now, the duo will turn to the science fiction genre with their forthcoming adaptation of this mysterious short story.
The Earthling: As Yet Unreleased Even in Written Form
This planned adaptation is an interesting one, in the sense that its source material is also forthcoming. The Earthling (not to be confused with a 1980 Australian adventure film of the same name) will be a short science fiction story authored by one Jonathan Marty. At this stage, very little has been made known about this story, though it has been compared to The Martian and Edge of Tomorrow.
The plot of The Martian concerns an astronaut who is marooned on Mars, while Edge of Tomorrow is an action sci-fi picture (based on a novel) in which human soldiers must save Europe from alien invaders. From this, and of course from its title, we can deduce that The Earthling will certainly involve futuristic space travel; whether it will feature extraterrestrials (which are central to the plot of Edge of Tomorrow but not at all present in The Martian) is still an open question.
Previously, Jonathan Marty has sold a number of television shows, including two with the respective names Splash Damage and A.I. (the latter being an hour-long drama that is presumably a sci-fi project) to The CW.
Production Breakdown – What We Know
Sony’s Columbia Pictures has bought the adaptation rights to The Earthling in a mid-six-figure deal. Eric Heisserer, the co-producer who is responsible for this deal, previously wrote the script for Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s much-acclaimed 2016 adaptation of a science fiction novella concerning alien contact. The Earthling’s other producers are Carmen Lewis and Scott Glassgold, and both Lipovsky and Stein are also attached to the project as executive producers. No release dates yet exist for The Earthling.
Final Thoughts
While it may seem somewhat incongruous, the adaptation of short stories into feature-length films has a strong precedent in popular fiction, particularly in the horror and sci-fi genres. Some of the most famous examples include the franchise-spawning 1984 horror film Children of the Corn, based on a Stephen King story (one of several of his short stories to be adapted to the screen), and Steven Spielberg’s 2001 sci-fi tearjerker A.I. Artificial Intelligence, adapted from Brian Aldiss’s story Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
Whether it concerns malevolent kids in rural Nebraska or the heartbreaking tale of an android Pinocchio, any short story’s premise needs to be a strong cinematic selling point for it to be picked up in Hollywood. What kind of dazzling outer-space tale convinced the talents behind Arrival and Final Destination: Bloodlines to put their minds to adapting The Earthling? We’ll just have to wait to find out.
