(courtesy IMP Awards)
SNAPSHOT
“The end of the world was just the beginning.” 🛩️ Set in Colorado after the world’s population has been ravaged by a pandemic, a man lives a lonesome existence in an airplane hangar with his dog and a door gunman he has befriended. When a mysterious transmission comes through on the radio while he is flying his old Cessna, it sparks a hunt for the provenance of the sound. The Dog Stars is directed by the prolific, acclaimed British filmmaker Ridley Scott, director of many iconic films including Alien, Prometheus, Alien Covenant, The Martian, Gladiator, Robin Hood, American Gangster, Matchstick Men, The Counselor, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, Legend, Exodus: Gods and Kings, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon, and Gladiator II previously. The screenplay is written by Mark L. Smith (of Vacancy, The Hole, Martyrs, The Revenant, Overlord, The Midnight Sky, Twisters). Adapted from the novel of the same name written by Peter Heller. Produced by Michael Pruss, Cliff Roberts, Ridley Scott, Mark L. Smith. (courtesy First Showing)
The Dog Stars was one of my top reads of 2016.
It really stood out because it dared, rather bravely and with great humanity and thoughtfulness, to ask what happens after the end of the world?
Most apocalyptic tales leave humanity fighting bloodily over the barest scraps of civilisation, but books like The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel dared to wonder if once the very worst had happened, something good might miraculously emerge?
Not easily or clearly and not without some nasty birthing pains, but emerge nonetheless, restoring nascent hope to a world well and truly shorn of it; it’s a radical idea in our deeply cynical era but it has some real power.
It makes for an altogether different look at the end of the world and I can’t wait to see what the great Ridley Scott does with an already strong and powerfully inspiring tale.
The Dog Stars opens 27 August in Australia and 28 August in U.S.