By Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 9/7/23 – For centuries mother nature has existed on a very cause-and-effect basis. Unfortunately for humans, we have been faced with the repercussions of our damaging actions as a society to the planet. Terrible storms and heat waves from coast to coast and the world; what would happen if wildlife began to retaliate alongside mother nature?
The new upcoming book adaptive thriller series The Swarm gives answer to this question while paralleling what tragedies society has been faced with. Doelger states, “When I was presented the novel, I thought there was something intriguing in the idea of taking the issue of climate change and how to perceive it a bit as a monster movie. The idea that there is something out there, something that is haunting, that’s frightening, that is scary, that our characters know about and have to discover. Of course, what they do discover is that the monster is us. We have driven this creature to do what it’s done because of our actions, just as we have it in us to get the creature to back off and learn our lesson. I wanted to make sure that if I was doing something on this topic that it would have a hopeful ending. Given how dire the situation is, we didn’t want people thinking there is nothing to be done; we tried to come up with a way so that people could realize that it may not be too late.”
The envisioning of the best-selling novel by Frank Schätzing further captures what happens when mother earth is pushed too far and how she begins to retaliate by way of, up until recently in the world, very docile creatures: the Orcas. Doelger recalls, “It’s very interesting, when I read this novel 4 years ago, a lot of what Frank Schätzing was dramatizing seemed like fantasy the idea of orcas attacking, that swarms of jellyfish coming to cloak harbors, that unknown pathogens would spend pandemics around the world, the fact that there could be a tsunami caused by shifts in the climate; all of these things have come to pass. Particularly the state of the orca attacks in the last year and the fact that some people believe could be caused by the orcas realizing that they are now competing with a rapidly deplenished stock of food and that fishermen are taking food from them and there’s less and less fish to be had. All of those things, it’s hard to believe that reality has caught up with fiction, but it seems to have and seems to be surpassing it.”
Be sure to catch the chilling debut series on the CW on September 12th!
