Despite a compelling concept and ideas that are still valid today, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has never made it to the big screen. And while it still won't with this version, the US SyFy channel has comics creator Grant Morrison and Crank co-director Brian Taylor developing a new TV take.
Huxley's tome, written in 1931 and published in 1932, is set roughly 500 years in the future (AD 2540) where humans are artificially bred into castes, which determine their intelligence, height and social prospects. They are dependent on a drug called soma and sexually promiscuous, although love and family are socially taboo.
The novel's protagonist, Bernard, is an Alpha Plus caste member with an inferiority complex who develops an inappropriate fixation on Beta Plus caste member Lenina. He tries to impress her on a trip to the Savage reservation where people still live normally, instead finding John, the son of an Alpha once exiled there and returning him to their civilisation as a celebrity.
There have been adaptations for theatre and radio and a couple of TV movies, and SyFy was first approached about the new series version by Steven Spielberg's Amblin company, with Les Bohem on board to write and produce the show. Now Morrison and Taylor will get their shot. As for a movie? Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio have been developing a take with Farhad Safina amongst those working on script drafts, but nothing has emerged from that effort yet.