By Matthew Eppinette, CBC New Media Manager

Anonymous International continues to be a theme, this time on the silver screen.

Vince Vaughn is slated to play a sperm donor in a film entitled Starbuck. This is a Hollywood remake of a French-Canadian film that seems to have been a hit, earning 86% from critics and 98% from audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here’s how Variety describes Starbuck:

Vaughn is in talks to play a middle-aged man whose life is turned upside down when he learns he has fathered 533 children through sperm donation. When a few hundred of the children express an irrepressible need to meet their father, the donor codenamed Starbuck, he must decide whether he will step up and reveal his identity.

A new Bollywood film also has a sperm donation plot. Vicky Donor, according to The Times of India tells the story of

Vicky Arora (Ayushmann Khurana) is an aimless and jobless Delhi boy. He is persuaded by Dr Baldev Chaddha (Annu Kapoor), an infertility clinic owner to become a sperm donor that could help childless couples. After much resistance, he finally agrees to the act to earn some easy money. Soon he makes a fortune out of his potent attribute. He also marries the love of his life Ashima (Yaami Gautam) but things take a drastic turn when she comes to know about his covert contributions to the sperm bank.

A separate article in in the Times of India mentions, almost in passing, that the film has caused of “rush” of men wanting to donate sperm.

I would be very curious to know how these filmmakers came to this subject for their films. It would also be interesting to know what attention, if any, they give to those conceived by sperm donation, how they feel and what they think.

This, of course, is why we made Anonymous Father’s Day, to give a voice to, as someone used to say, “the rest of the story.”