Sunshine - script (and backstories) by Alex Garland

Sunshine trailer


Sunshine, written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, is released in the UK tomorrow. On the film's (slightly confusing) website they've posted Garland's backstories for each of the characters. There will also be a novel with the same title, but it has not yet been published. Garland, who had huge success at the age of 24 with his first novel, The Beach, has sounded diffident about writing in the past.

I often find writing a kind of irritating way to spend my one shot at life. I never felt short of things to write about. It was more to do with the will to write. I'd read stuff I'd written and think, "Who cares? I don't. Why should anyone else?"'

But he has always insisted that he does not suffer from writers' block.

Garland was very irritated, however, about reports in the media about him having suffered from writer's block. "I have never said to anyone that I had writer's block. I have never had writer's block." At the time he was working round the clock on the screenplay for 28 Days Later. "I don't understand it. People wanted me to have writer's block."