Benedict Cumberbatch Starring In The Child In Time TV Adaptation

Looking to keep producing some of the movies and TV series he works on, Benedict Cumberbatch has been developing an adaptation of Ian McEwan's The Child In Time, and will star in the one-off drama for the BBC and America's PBS Masterpiece strand.

McEwan's book is set in a dystopian future at the end of the 20th century. Our focus is on Stephen Lewis, an author of children's books whose daughter Kate goes missing in a supermarket. Driven to drink and despair by the loss, Stephen drifts away from his wife, Julia, who responds by becoming a recluse. But his life is forever altered through contact with and old friend (now a successful minister in the Cabinet) and the man's wife, a quantum physicist, who has some seemingly outlandish theories about the nature of time and space...

The Whitbread Novel Award-winning novel, originally published in 1987, will now become a 90-minute drama, with Stephen Butchard adapting the script and Julian Farino as director. “I read the novel years ago and it stayed with me – profound, beautiful and very moving," says Cumberbatch. "Only Ian McEwan could write about loss with such telling honesty. We’re very excited to have Stephen Butchard’s subtle and brilliant adaptation, and in Julian Farino we have an extraordinary director who delivers emotional truth."

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