Author Ian McEwan is hot stuff all of a second. The multi-award-winning British author is no stranger to screen adaptations — “The Comfort Of Strangers” and “The Cement Garden” in the early 90s, and “Enduring Love” and the Oscar-nominated “Atonement,” to name but a few — but 2017 marks something close to peak McEwan.
Two movies based on his work are premiering at TIFF at the moment — “On Chesil Beach,” with Saoirse Ronan (read our review here) and “The Children Act” with Emma Thompson. And before the year is out, we should see another, with the BBC TV film “The Child In Time,” which toplines one of the biggest stars around at the minute, in the shape of Benedict Cumberbatch, and a trailer has just arrived.
Taking a break from playing arrogant, socially awkward geniuses, the film sees Cumberbatch play a children’s book author whose daughter vanishes from a supermarket, tearing his life apart. Kelly Macdonald also stars as Cumberbatch’s wife, with Stephen Campbell Moore and Saskia Reeves also in the cast, while “Ballers” and “The Oranges” director Julian Farino is at the helm of the project.
It’s also, notably, the first major project from Cumberbatch’s own production company SunnyMarch, who are also working on miniseries “Patrick Melrose,” the Steven Knight-directed “Rio,” and thriller “Rogue Male,” among other projects. It suggests it’s something of a passion project for the A-lister, who’s likely getting paid a fraction of what he’d get for a “Doctor Strange” appearance.
The book entails quite a few elements not hinted at in the trailer — dystopian futures and time travel! — so it’ll be interesting to see if they’ll be retained for the film. There’s no indication of when it’ll bow, but the trailer suggests it’ll be coming up in the UK soon, with an airing on PBS Masterpiece Theater likely to follow soon after. Watch the trailer below.