In an as-of-yet-to-be published interview with “The Report” writer/director Scott Z. Burns (the screenwriter of many Steven Soderbergh films too and one of the writers of the forthcoming 007 adventure “No Time to Die”), the conversation, with Editor-in-Chief went a little like this at one point:
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I’m surprised you haven’t done anything on climate change recently given how much it’s in the conversation and people often forget that it’s kind of one of your bread and butters and you were one of the Oscar-winning producers of “ An Inconvenient Truth.”
[long pause]
“Well, as it turns out, that is the next thing I’m going to work on,” Burns said.
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“What’s interesting to me about climate change is, is there a way of storytelling around it? That starts with the human experience and works outward from there. I think we tend to be so terrified of the science and the possibility that those are the first place as a creative person that you stop because they’re so fantastical and I don’t mean fantastical in that they’re a fantasy, but they’re just so extraordinarily profound is a better word when you start hearing about an island thinking under the ocean.”
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“So I do have a project that I’m starting in January that I can’t talk too much about, but yeah, that’s what I want to focus on because it is, I think, the biggest issue of our time,” he explained. “Once we get done playing politics with it, it’s going to be our most formidable adversary.”
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Well, it’s here and coming now according to Variety. The anthology series will be called “Extrapolations” and Apple TV+ is eying the project for a series order, which isn’t too surprising given the critical acclaim that is greeting their new “Little America” anthology (which shares a format and a socially conscious worldview). The trade describes the project as telling “intimate stories of how the upcoming changes to our planet will affect love, faith, work and family on a personal and human scale.” In a statement to the outlet, Burns said: ““Our aim with ‘Extrapolations’ is to move beyond science and use drama, comedy, mystery and every other genre to allow us to consider how every aspect of our world is going to be changing in the years ahead. We can all speculate on precisely what is coming in terms of temperature increase or sea level rise or climate-driven human migration…but what we know for sure is that– no matter what– we are all going to be there, together, with our foibles, our dreams, our appetites and our other issues. The climate is going to change, are we?”
As both “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Report” proved, Burns can turn even the most crushingly depressing subject matter and make then entertaining as hell. We assume he’ll do the same for “Extrapolations.”
