If Children of Men were made in 2026, it would be set in 2047.
The short answer
Children of Men was released in 2006 and set 21 years ahead, in 2027. Made in 2026 instead, the same reach would put it in 2047 — one of the shortest forward reaches here, with 20 years of the original already spent.
The arithmetic
What year would Children of Men be set in if it were made in 2026?
When it was made
If it were made in 2026
- Released
- 2006
- Originally set in
- 2027
- The gap
- 21 years
- Recalculated for 2026
- 2047
Verified, sourced
Children of Men, in 7 facts
The date is load-bearing rather than decorative: the film is set in 2027, when two decades of human infertility have left civilisation on the brink of collapse. Source
P. D. James's novel, published in 1992, is set in 2021. The film moved the date six years further out. Source
In the novel, the last human being was born in 1995 — the year James calls Omega, when all human sperm, even frozen, "had lost its potency". Source
Cuarón used James's premise as a starting point for something else entirely, addressing the treatment of refugees rather than the novel's own preoccupations. Source
Its long takes are unusually long: an ambush on a country road runs 4m07s, Kee's birth scene 3m19s, and a sequence in the middle of a battle 6m18s. Source
Kee is carrying the first child conceived in eighteen years, which is the whole of the plot's leverage. Source
It took $69.6 million worldwide, was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won BAFTAs for cinematography and production design. Source
The point
What the shift reveals
A short reach is the expensive option. It buys immediacy and it forfeits deniability, because a film set 21 years out will be read against the actual world for the whole of its life.
Cuarón took that deal deliberately, and then made it harder on himself. The production design is almost entirely present tense: the buses, the anoraks, the riot shields and the paperwork are the ones the audience of 2006 already owned, with the fertility removed. Nothing is styled as the future except the scale of the misery. That is why the film is quoted every time a real government puts people in cages — it left almost no margin between its setting and its release for anything to be excused as invention.
Recalculate it and the arithmetic returns 2047, which lands the same distance in front of a reader as 2027 did in front of the first audience. The remake would need no new ideas at all. It would only need this year’s photographs, and it would be no less convincing for it.
Asked and answered
Questions people ask
- What year is Children of Men set in?
- 2027, which is 21 years after the film was released. The infertility that drives the story began about two decades before that.
- What year would Children of Men be set in if it were made in 2026?
- 2047. Cuarón reached 21 years forward, so the same reach from 2026 lands there.
- Is the film set in the same year as the book?
- No. James's 1992 novel is set in 2021; Cuarón's film moves it to 2027 and changes most of what happens in it.
- How close is Children of Men to the present?
- Very. Its gap of 21 years is one of the shortest on this site, and 20 years of it have already been spent.
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