It's no secret this one is in full swing. Networks like Discovery and History have been striking ratings gold with documentaries about predicting the end of the world for a while now. The movie 2012 was also released in theaters this month with a $65 million opening weekend (and already has a tv spin-off in the works), and Tim LaHaye, co-author of the megaselling Left Behind series, is starting a new series of apocalyptic novels called, appropriately enough, The End.
So what's the news? We all only have to look on the front page of any of the trades to see this one coming. But we've also already been through this hysteria before, and recently. Just 10 years ago, the country was up to their eyeballs in apocalyptic media, fearing the turn of the millenium and Y2K. So how is thing time going to be different? One (hyphenated) word: post-apocalypse. 2007 saw the beginning of this with the release of the hit I Am Legend. Fast-forward to now: the 2012 series being developed for ABC is set after the events in the movie and focuses on humans rebuilding in the aftermath. Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning (and best-selling) novel The Road was just made into a feature film. And there's even a trend of post-apocalyptic fiction coming to the children and tween's fiction market, according to Publisher's Weekly.
A new twist on a very old idea, but still slowly gaining steam. As for me, I'm just waiting to see if AMC can take advantage of this trend with their Walking Dead series before that zombie wave jumps the shark. Here's hoping.
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