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A NEW BEGINNING FOR “CHILDHOOD’S END”

Several attempts to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End into a film or miniseries have been made with varying levels of success. Philip DeGuere developed a script in the late 1970s for Universal and in this interview he gives some details regarding the pre-production of the project.
Preproduction drawing by Neal Adams. Adams was one of the first people contacted by Phil DeGuere when plans moved ahead on the Universal production of Childhood's End

Several attempts to adapt Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End into a film or miniseries have been made with varying levels of success.
Philip DeGuere, whose credits include the TV series
Alias Smith and Jones, developed a script in the late 1970s for Universal, who planned to film it initially as a six-hour mini-series for CBS Television, and later as a two- or three-hour telemovie for ABC. However, Universal discovered that its contracts with Arthur C. Clarke—some of which dated back to 1957—were out of date. These contractual difficulties were resolved in 1979 and DeGuere worked with legendary comic book artist Neal Adams on preproduction drawings and other material. The project had Clarke’s approval. However Universal decided that the budget required would be nearly $40 million and they were only prepared to spend $10 million, so the movie was not made.
The following interview with Philip DeGuere was made when the project was still in the pre-production phase.

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STARLOG PREVIEW

A New Beginning for Childhood’s End

An adaptation of this influential SF novel has been on Hollywood’s backburner for years. Now a top writer/director wants to get it fueled.

by James H. Burns

The power of Childhood’s End remains undiminished as the years go by,” says Phil DeGuere, a Universal Studios producer/director/writer (Black Sheep Squadron, Dr. Strange). “The real reason for making the picture is that the story is worth telling to a large number of people. It fills you with a sense of wonder and enlightenment. Childhood’s End is one of the few science-fiction novels that even people who don’t like science fiction enjoy. But, unfortunately, people in this business tend to be shy of innovation.”

Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End was first published in 1953 and has since become one of the genre’s most influential and best selling novels. The book concerns humanity’s encounter with an apparently superior race named the Overlords and the future development of the human race.

What Phil DeGuere hints at in his opening statement is that for the past year his tele-film production of Childhood’s End has been stalled due to various legal and financial entanglements. DeGuere shouldn’t be surprised at this stasis, however, considering Childhood’s End’s bizarre past as a film project.

Kicking around Hollywood as a viable movie property since the mid fifties, Childhood’s End resurfaced for celluloid potential in 1975 when the late Gene Kearney, one of Universal’s best writers and producers (Night Gallery, Kojak, Games), realized that his studio owned the novel’s option.

“That was two years before Star Wars, so I think it’s safe to say that nobody had a very good idea of what was involved in bringing a picture like Childhood’s End to the screen,” DeGuere remembers. “When Gene left Universal in 1977,1 kind of inherited the idea of trying to develop Childhood’s End.

DeGuere soon discovered that the novel was in “turnaround” to producer George Litto, a former Universal staffer, who had been interested in Childhood’s End while still with the company. This meant that while Universal technically owned the book’s rights, Litto was free to sell the project to another company.

“It wasn’t until Star Wars came out that all of the sudden everyone wanted to jump on that particular bandwagon. Then Universal became actively concerned and took the necessary steps to bring Childhood’s End back.”

Childhood’s End was initially going to be produced as a 6-hour mini-series for CBS. When that fell through, ABC told Universal that they wanted the property as a two or three hour feature.

“That was the summer of 1978,’’ DeGuere recalls. “We would have proceeded aggressively on trying to pull the project off, but then it became known that the contracts that had originally been written with Arthur Clarke were so old—some of them dating back to 1957—that several of them had expired. It took a month and a half just to get a lawyer to find the contracts and read them in order to verify that we had lost the rights to some aspects of Childhood’s End. It took another nine months to resolve the stalemate between the lawyers representing Universal and Arthur’s people. That was the major delay once we actually had a go-ahead from the network. The new contracts stipulate that Universal retains all rights in the galaxy or the universe. They’re thinking fairly far down the line. . . .”

During that nine month period, DeGuere wrote a 70-page treatment for the film in which he solved many of the problems inherent to adapting the novel to film. The only major change that he instituted was promoting Jan Rodericks, the black youth who becomes the only human the Overlords permit to watch man’s evolution, to a character that appears throughout the entire story.

“That was done to unify the film,” DeGuere explains, “because, except for Karellen, the events and characters in the first half of the book are not related to the events and characters in the second half of the book. That could have been the tele-feature’s only fault. It doesn’t feel right to ask an audience to sit for an hour and a half and get to know some characters and a story and then suddenly jump 25 to 50 years in the future and start a whole new story. You need some kind of satisfactory link to work as a framework. Having Jan Rodericks not only finish the story but start it as well seems to work beautifully.”

The legal difficulties were finally settled around January of 1979. DeGuere began writing a full screenplay and commenced pre-production. One of his first moves was to hire Neal Adams, one of America’s premiere graphic illustrators (best known for his comic book work, Tarzan paperback covers, and involvement with the SF play, Warp), as a production designer.

Happy Coincidence

“I think comic artists are most particularly adept at condensing story elements into single pictures,” says DeGuere. “Neal Adams has always been one of my absolute favorite artists and it was one of those happy coincidences that I was able to get him. Neal has a unique ability to take a scene, read it, interpret it, understand it and figure out a way to make it look right in a painting. It is a hell of a lot easier to have a single drawing or painting that you can take around to the technical people in the movie business and say, ‘This is what I want to see on the screen, ’ than to write a page of description in the screenplay and have various people interpret that and do it whatever way they like. We also had a couple of pieces of artwork done by an amazing visionary named Anthony Scott Thom. There’s an incredible range of artists in this country who have become fascinated with fantastic themes. They make a talent pool that you naturally want to tap into when you do a picture like Childhood’s End.”

DeGuere also began exploring how Child­hood’s End’s special effects requirements would be effectively executed.

“My concern has always been for adequate resources,” DeGuere comments. ‘‘I’m confident that Universal will let me film a faithful adaptation of the novel, but we need enough money to do it right. There aren’t too many people around who can do the kind of special effects and makeup required for Childhood’s End.

“Some of the effects might require slightly changing the story. I don’t think, for example, that we could realistically show the Overlords’ spaceships coming over New York City during the day. As soon as you start dealing with blue skies and clouds, you run into horrendous effects problems. It may be a lot smarter for me to have a spaceship coming in at night, hang over the city and flash some lights and then go into orbit—at which point I don’t have to deal with the problem of matting the spaceship against a blue sky. I’m compromising, but even with a $40 million budget, you might not be able to successfully put the ships against a blue sky. For me, this type of film has to be done right, or not at all.”

DeGuere also established contact with Ar­thur C. Clarke, to insure the project’s integrity.

“What little we talked about seemed to meet with his approval at the time,” DeGuere says, “but it was hard to get too many specifics talking to a man I had never met at 1:30 in the morning my time (there is an 11½ hour time difference between California and Sri Lanka where Clarke resides). He approved of my boosting Jan Roderick’s role in the novel and also my elimination of the kidnapping of Stormgren. Arthur revealed to me that the abduction had been an element that existed in an earlier novella that he had incorporated into Childhood’s End and that it didn’t really pay off as far as the overall structure of the book is concerned.

“More recently I wrote him a letter explaining that the production’s been held up for a while, which I think he might have suspected was going to happen. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a hell of a lot to say to him. I told him that I was really embarrassed by the situation, but I guess Arthur’s been through this before with other projects. When the film gets going again, I’ll hopefully be able to meet with Arthur and get as much input from him as possible.”

Childhood’s End’s tele-film limbo status is somewhat difficult for DeGuere to understand. He had originally thought that Universal was simply waiting to make sure that Star Trek—The Motion Picture and The Black Hole would both be relatively successful before proceeding into production.

“Maybe now they’re waiting to see how Dino’s [De Laurentiis] Flash Gordon will do,” Phil speculates. “Certainly, if that film is successful, it would be a good impetus to reactivate Childhood’s End. The novel really doesn’t fit the kinds of categories that SF films and television have in the past. You almost have to look at filmed science fiction as a completely separate phenomenon from written science fiction. It’s very rare that it has made an adequate transition. Science-fiction movies have always fundamentally been exploitation films. There really isn’t much precedent for trying to adapt a science-fiction novel as a work of literature.”

Theatrical Potential?

If Universal and ABC find Childhood’s End cost (DeGuere estimates the picture’s budget at roughly $10 million) prohibitive for television, could the novel find life as a theatrical release?

“Universal has recognized Childhood’s End’s potential as a feature film presentation,” DeGuere explains. “As I understand, however, it’s somewhat more attractive for them to consider making pictures of this nature where their financial involvement is limited, like on Flash Gordon. That may change, but there are other factors. From the studio’s point of view, the story doesn’t have the elements that are time tested for theatricals. Childhood’s End doesn’t have a clearly etched battle between good and evil, a group of people running around shooting at each other, a great deal of jeopardy, or a life and death situation as far as the characters are concerned. I’m inclined to think that a feature film would be a cross-over situation, where adults would see it because of the story and kids would want to see because of the aliens and spaceships. The merchandising prospects of the Overlords are certainly intriguing.”

“The major audience for movies might have to mature before we can do a feature,” DeGuere continues. “Presently, the target audience for motion pictures is teenagers. The majority of films are therefore designed for an even lower common denominator than television. But I think that there’s kind of a demographic change taking place. The age of the largest segment of the country’s population is rising for the first time in over 30 years. All this translates into my mind as meaning that little by little the target audience for motion pictures will have to grow older. Films will have to reflect matured tastes of the masses. It’s possible that the fundamental factor for Childhood’s End’s future really involves a change in the way in which this industry makes its decisions.”

Another possibility is that an independent producer could approach Universal and either buy the rights to Childhood’s End or offer a co-financing agreement.

“That might be the way it has to happen,” DeGuere admits, “because in order for this picture to get made at Universal, somebody in a high decision-making position is going to have to make a personal commitment to go ahead with the project. It requires that kind of courage which is not necessarily the long suit of this industry’s executives.”

If another studio does buy the rights to Childhood’s End, would DeGuere try to become involved with the new production?

“I probably wouldn’t have to do that,” he says, “because if somebody were to buy the rights from Universal, they’d get a copy of my script as part of the sale. Naturally, I don’t think anybody’s going to come up with a better script. Anybody sensible enough to know what they were buying would read all the available material. Hopefully, they’d realize that they had a good adaptation in my screenplay.”

As for the Future

The events surrounding Universal’s development of Childhood’s End could help explain why there aren’t more capable producers handling television science fiction. Like several producers before him, DeGuere— who is obviously talented enough to helm quality fantasy endeavors—has run into so many delays that he might be understandably wary of initiating future science fiction oriented productions.

“I don’t think that that’s going to be the case,” says DeGuere. “There are so many frustrations and roadblocks that you run into naturally in films and TV that I don’t think it’s likely that any of us are going to get that discouraged.”

DeGuere has already completed a pilot script for ABC which he describes as “The Six Million Dollar Man meets Carrie” and also maintains hopes for a mini-series based on Larry Niven’s and Jerry Poumelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer. At the moment, Childhood’s End is basically ready to start rolling. Once the tele-feature gets a go-ahead, it would still be a year away from actual production, but “90% of the problem is solved” in that the book is adapted and DeGuere has a completed script.

If the demons of tinsel town unfortunately conspire to let Childhood’s End lay on the shelf, Arthur C. Clarke’s brainchild might appear in other media. Broadway producers have shown interest in the bringing the story to the stage and, at the very least, some publisher might release a special edition of Child­hood’s End utilizing Neal Adams’ prepro­duction paintings and sketches.

But Phil DeGuere isn’t content to watch Childhood’s End “appear in other media.”

“Most producers have in the back of their desks those one or two very special projects that they have always wanted to make and never forget,” says Phil. “In my case, Childhood’s End is one of them. If I were suddenly catapulted into a position of great clout in the business and was given a blank check, it’s very likely that I would immediately get Childhood’s End launched.

“The other thing is that, fortunately, it doesn’t necessarily require me to reach that position. I get a lot of phone calls every week from people all around the world showing interest in the project. I would like nothing better than for somebody to come along and get the film made.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s inevitable that Childhood’s End gets made. At one point, it’s bound to happen.”

SOURCE: Starlog, Issue 042, January 1981

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