3D Triffids soon
- 11 October 2010
- John Howell
John Wyndham's science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids is getting some welcome attention lately. A 2009 BBC1 miniseries was made last year (and was very well received - especially by me) and now the dystopian plant fest is heading for the big screen once more with a 3D feature from Michael Pregerd. Pregerd is the same producer who put the 2009 BBC1 miniseries together. Preger's company purchased the screen rights to the novel in 1991 with the intention of developing a big screen film with Transformers producer Dan Murphy.
In The Day of the Triffids, poisonous plants run amok after almost everyone has been blinded by a solar storm (or was it a military experiment gone awry?). With most of the population blind, the slow moving Triffids with their fatal stings take over.
"It is a story that strikes at the heart of what it means to be human," said Murphy, "and does so in an intensely cinematic way."
The last major movie adaptation of The Day of the Triffids was the extremely bad 1963 version directed by Steve Sekely and staring Howard Keel as Bill Masen, which ended with Masen spraying the Triffids with sea water, causing them to dissolve. Hopefully they can come up with a better (less pathetic!) adaptation this time around. If nothing else, we're bound to see a lot of great 3D footage of monster plants walking about on three legs with stings reaching out towards us in an extra dimension. What more could you ask for?
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