The actor will take the lead in The Humanity Bureau, set in 2030 when global warming has destroyed much of the Earth’s hottest regions

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Nicolas Cage is to take the lead in a new sci-fi movie depicting a world ravaged by climate change. The film, called The Humanity Project, takes place in 2030, when much of the midwest of America has been rendered uninhabitable.

The government agency of the title exiles people felt to be unproductive and banishes them to a colony, New Eden. Cage plays a caseworker seeking to appeal the exile of a single mother (Sarah Lind) and her son (Jakob Davies).

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The film has been scripted by Dave Schultz, will be directed by Rob King, and is due to start shooting in British Columbia next week.

The eco-disaster movie dates back to the early 1970s, with Bruce Dern vehicle Silent Running. Other notables in the genre include Soylent Green (1973), Waterworld (1995), The Core (2003), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Children of Men (2006), Wall-E (2008) and 2012 (2009).

George Miller’s Mad Max series is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose inhabitants seek to defend themselves against drought; Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar depicted an Earth no longer inhabitable, hence the need to explore other potential planets. However that film did not explicitly attribute the situation to global warming.