With the US SyFy channel already dipping into sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke’s bibliography with a Childhood’s End series (exciting!), the network is now looking to bring the fourth of his Space Odyssey books to life. Ridley Scott is attached to produce 3001: The Final Odyssey as a limited series.
Collateral writer Stuart Beattie has been hired to adapt the book for the director’s Scott Free Productions, tackling the last of the four novels Clarke wrote about mankind’s interaction with mysterious alien Monoliths and the powers they hold.
3001 opens with an exploration of the creatures who created the imposing, powerful devices, but focuses on Frank Poole, who you might recall was cut off from Discovery and turned into an astronautsicle by coldly logical computer HAL 9000 in 2001. Recovered, thawed and reanimated, he forms a plan to stop the Monoliths destroying mankind (designated dangerous by the alien beings) by using HAL and Bowman (now a composite being called Halman lurking within the Monolith’s systems) to infect them with a computer virus. Yes, most of the mystery surrounding the big ideas birthed in short story The Sentinel (which kicked all this off) is burned off by the time 3001 is finished.
Though the book (and its predecessor, the thus far un-adapted 2061: Odyssey Three) was targeted for film treatment back in 2000 by Tom Hanks, nothing has come of it until now. Scott will shepherd the new series presumably while also developing the 7300 other projects he has on his To Do list.
“Arthur C. Clarke is the father of modern science fiction,” says Syfy president Dave Howe. “We couldn’t be more excited to be working with Scott Free and Warner Horizon Television to bring to the screen, for the very first time, the final chapter of this extraordinary masterpiece.”