John Wyndham’s infamous carnivorous plants are set to return.
The world is a ruined wasteland. Everywhere there are shuffling humans, desperate to eke out an existence in a world gone terribly wrong. This time though, the villain isn’t zombies – it’s plants.
Back in 1951, John Wyndham wrote “The Day of The Triffids”, a story that holds some relevance today, in which a corporation is approached by a man with a remarkable new oil.
This plant oil derived from a genetically modified crop is better than anything they’ve ever seen. Sensing a total monetary collapse, the corporation decide that his plane will never get home. The man and his seeds are soon ‘dispatched’ to the great garden in the sky, but some seeds fall to Earth.
The strange plants start to grow across the world. But then, bright lights appear in the sky, and people start to watch. And then one star burns brightly, brightly enough to burn out optic nerves. The next morning, almost the entire world is blind…and humanity crumbles. From the detritus of civilisation, the man-eaters grow and start to harvest the human race.
This could easily be the start to 28 Days Later, Left4Dead,I Am Legend or Resident Evil; most modern disaster films owe a great debt to “Triffids,” one of the original ‘apocalypse’ novels. With apocalyptic films and games raging through the media, the BBC figured there was no better time to bring back the original bad guys. The adaptation is scheduled to begin filming soon.
One hopes that the BBC will also look into Wyndham’s other works, including The Chyrsalids, about genetic mutation and religious persecution, and The Kraken Wakes, which chronicles a world terrified by rising sea levels.
Source : BBC News
