Creation Begins with Newmarket

I’m getting to this post-TIFF purchase a little late. Despite not releasing a film since August of 2007 (The Nines), Newmarket Films will use their all eggs in one basket approach for a title pick-up that recalls of their huge money making venture a couple of years back with The Passion of Christ. Newmarket Films have picked up Jon Amiel’s Creation – and while the TIFF opener failed to win over film critics the co. will hope that a zealous public will stir up debate prior to release. In the 150th year anniversary of the book’s release, I imagine that some kind of reaction will be fueled by those who don’t dig Darwin type. The distributor plans a December release.

Based on the novel Annie’s Box by Randall Keynes, the great-great grandson of the Victorian scientist, this focuses on the period when Darwin was writing “The Origin of the Species,” his ground-breaking treatise on evolution, while living a family life at Down House in Kent, near London. The “Annie” of the title is Darwin’s first daughter, whose death aged 10 left him grief-stricken. With his scientific discoveries leading him toward agnosticism, he was unable to find consolation in belief in an afterlife, but coped with his loss by plunging into his work.