When we last spoke with “Stop-Loss” director Kimberly Peirce, we said of her next film, “Childhood’s End,” a classic work of science fiction from the recently passed Arthur C. Clarke, that “the devil is in the details” (SPOILER WARNING) because mankind’s salvation ultimately comes on the wings of its worst fears – winged, red aliens that look exactly like Satan.

“It has this notion that there was some creature here before and it was intelligent,” Peirce said of the book’s first act revelation when we caught up with her again this week. “It imprinted itself in our mind and if we look into the future we find out that, in fact, it [gave birth to our notion of] Satan.”

Of course, like Clarke’s other masterpiece, “2001,” the book is about so much more than appearances – it’s about life, and death, and rebirth on a grand, cosmic scale. But given the potential for religious fallout (and, make no mistake, Clarke is essentially saying that all religion is false) how do you portray the image for a mass audience without softening the message?

“You pull it out of this satanic thing and you kind of just look at it as the way that it is,” Peirce said. “You kind of allow people to understand that this satanic idea could have been placed on this imprint from an encounter early on. It wasn’t that Satan came - but that there was a being that came and we may have created religion and Satan and God around it.”

Which is our point, and in the book, it makes for a pretty abrupt end to childhood fantasies when the world discovers the truth. But will our world be nearly as easy to win over?

“I think so,” Pearce said. “I don’t [expect] any fallout.”

What do you think? “Childhood’s End” has all the pieces to be a sci-fi classic, and Pearce doesn’t seem to be backing down from its message. Are you excited for this film? Do you think there will be fallout? Sound off below.