Childhood's End - Adaptations

Adaptations

In the 1960s, director Stanley Kubrick was interested in making a film adaptation of the novel, but blacklisted director Abraham Polonsky had already optioned it. Instead, Kubrick collaborated with Clarke on adapting the short story "The Sentinel" into what eventually became 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Months before his performance at Woodstock in 1969, folk singer and guitarist Richie Havens told Ebony magazine about his appreciation of Clarke's story and expressed his interest in working on a future film adaptation of Childhood's End. Screenplays by Polonsky and Howard Koch were never made into films. As of 2002, rights to the novel were held by Universal Pictures, with director Kimberly Peirce attached to a project.

David Elgood first proposed a radio adaptation of the novel in 1974, but nothing came of it until director Brian Lighthill revisited the proposal and obtained the rights in 1995. After Lighthill received a go-ahead from BBC Radio in 1996, he commissioned a script from Tony Mulholland, resulting in a new, two-part adaptation. The BBC produced the two-hour radio dramatization of the novel, and broadcast it on BBC Radio 4 in November 1997. The recording was released on cassette by BBC Audiobooks in 1998 and on CD in 2007.

On October 28, 2008, Audible.com released a 7 hour and 47 minute unabridged version of Childhood's End, narrated by Eric Michael Summerer under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. An AudioFile review commended Summerer's narration as "smoothly presented and fully credible". A bonus audio introduction and commentary is provided by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer.