She Who Brings Gifts

She Who Brings Gifts is an upcoming British post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror thriller film directed by Colm McCarthy. The screenplay was written by M.R. Carey adapted from his own novel The Girl with All the Gifts. The film stars Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine. The plot depicts a dystopian future following a breakdown of society after most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection and focuses upon the struggle of a scientist, a teacher and two soldiers who embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.^[1]

Plot

In the near future, most of humanity has been infected by a variation of a fungus known as the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also referred to as a zombie fungus. The infected, referred to as "hungries", quickly lose their mental powers and feed on the flesh of healthy humans. The disease spreads through blood and spit, but can also spread through spores created by the fungus, which needs an unknown trigger to be opened. The few surviving members of the human race live in heavily-guarded Birmingham and are focused on discovering a cure by studying a small group of children that are second-generation hybrids - part ‘Hungry’, part human. Unlike first generation ‘Hungries’, the children are able to retain their mental powers and only lose control when they get too close to human scent. These studies require that the scientists kill their test subjects, something that one teacher, Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton), finds uncomfortable. When one of the children, Melanie (Sennia Nanua), is selected for dissection by the head scientist Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close), Helen must risk everything to save her.

Cast

• Gemma Arterton as Helen Justineau
• Glenn Close as Dr. Caroline Caldwell
• Paddy Considine as Sgt. Eddie Parks
• Anamaria Marinca as Dr. Selkirk
• Dominique Tipper as Devani
• Fisayo Akinade as Private Kieran Gallagher
• Anthony Welsh as Dillon
• Sennia Nanua as Melanie
• Amy Newey as Feral Child
• Elizabeth-Anne Fuller as School Child
• Graham.A.Ward as Hungrie

Production

Upon the book's release, M.R. Carey announced that the book would be made into its own movie, with the screenplay already written and a movie a deal in place and revealed that the movie and the novel were written in tandem, and the movie's title will differ from the book in that it will be under the moniker She Who Brings Gifts.^[2] On the 23rd of March, 2015, the casting was announced for the film.^[3] Of whether or not the film would be similar to the novel, Carey stated:^[4]

We went a slightly different way in the movie, especially when it came to point of view. Where the novel moves between the five main characters and lets us see what’s going on in all of their heads, the movie sticks with Melanie all the way. And there are no Junkers in the movie. The base falls to a hungry attack. But it’s a case of two different paths through the same narrative space. The ending is absolutely faithful to the book.

— M.R. Carey, in an interview with Mom Advice^[4]

Filming

Principal photography began on May 17, 2015 in The West Midlands taking place in Birmingham city centre and other Birmingham boroughs including Dudley and Sandwell and also outside of Birmingham Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent and Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, England.^[5]

References

External links

• She Who Brings Gifts at the Internet Movie Database