Lawrence Gough won this year's emerging-talent Trailblazer Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival for his paranoid horror Salvage. And it's stood him in very good stead, since his next project, The Drought, is being fast-tracked into production.
Yes indeed, readers, it's our second apocalypse-movie story of the morning. John Hillcoat and Roland Emmerich have a lot to answer for. Armageddon is the new black.
Nobody is mentioning JG Ballard, whose novel The Drought, originally published in 1964 as The Burning World (a counterpoint / companion piece to his The Drowned World), sees the Earth's population heading seaward after man-made ecological disaster causes the world to run dry of precious H20.
Gough's version, written by Colin O'Donnell, who also wrote Salvage, has a similar basic premise, but apparently revolves around a couple and their child heading searching for water in London.
London? Why London? Do the taps still work there? Have New Labour set up secret underground reservoirs for just such an eventuality as this? The official synopsis also mentions lawless scavengers patrolling the roads, and a "greater evil" closing in. David Cameron?
All will no doubt eventually be explained, with casting taking place after Christmas, and shooting pencilled in for next summer.