Back in 2021 I heard about a new film out of South Africa called Gaia. According to the plot synopsis, the story starts with two characters Gabi and Winston exploring a forest in South Africa. When they leave, Gabi tells Winston that “we can’t just leave our trash here.” It then turns out that Winston has been infected by a lethal fungus, which Gabi later links to a Gaia-worshipping survivalist cult. 

The movie didn’t achieve wide release, however the reviews were quite good. According to Roger Ebert, “Gaia has a lot to say about humanity’s destruction of the environment, about the ‘tipping point’ we have collectively reached in the Anthropocene, but the film says it with creativity, mad flights of imagination, and even humor.”

My interest though was due to the fact that in 1999 I wrote a screenplay that was also called Gaia. In my version, the story starts with two sisters Sandra and Anne exploring a forest in Venezuela. When they leave, Anne tells Sandra “We shouldn’t leave behind any trace that we were here.” It then turns out that Anne has been infected by a lethal fungus, which Sandra later links to a Gaia-worshipping survivalist cult.

At the time I found an agent with an address on Sunset Boulevard, and had some interest in the screenplay from a UK production firm, but it didn’t go anywhere, so I adapted the screenplay into a novel (represented by the Robert Lecker Agency) and switched my focus to writing non-fiction books on science and economics.

Now, leaving aside the question of whether the South African team had read my book (available in self-published form at Amazon since 2009), and noting that the stories do take very different turns (mine moves to the city and has a much bigger scale, different style etc.), I think that the initial premise which they share is in some ways pretty optimal for an eco-thriller about our relationship with the living planet.

When I wrote my screenplay, the logic of the story was that if the Earth is alive, and humanity is harming it, then the Earth will produce an antibody to counter us, which we will perceive as a disease. The Earth doesn’t make a very good antagonist in a story though, so as a human stand-in I used the leader of an Earth-worshipping cult who plans to spread the disease to save Gaia. Also, the disease can’t just escape and wipe everyone out (end of story) so we need the cult to actually play a moderating role in controlling the disease until he feels the time is right.

The main protagonist Sandra is an oil company PR executive. This choice of profession is important. As a recent Nature review of a book on James Lovelock, of Gaia theory fame, wrote: “If you wanted to be spiritual about it, you could argue that Gaia chose Lovelock as her messenger, despite – or perhaps because of – his evident personal failings. You’d expect a tree-hugger to tell you that the planet is one vast interconnected system powered by life. But when a scientist paid by Shell and Dow Chemical delivers the message, you believe it.” So in my story, it is Anne the environmentalist who dies, and the oil company executive who must stop the disease and save the world (or at least the human part).

The nature of the disease was also carefully chosen, mostly because it is so creepy: a variant of the fungus cordyceps, used later in another apocalyptic drama The Last of Us.

Of course there are many other ways to write a story about the living Earth (see for example David Brin’s Earth). And my screenplay is far from being perfect (it turns out I am better at non-fiction). But if you are a producer thinking to make such a film, or a screenwriter looking for a Gaia-related project, please get in touch – maybe I can save you some trouble this time.