Larklight is a space opera set in an alternative Victorian era, in which mankind has been exploring the Solar System for at least a century, and wherein most of the planets are inhabitable.

Protagonist Art Mumby narrates an attack on the British Empire and the Solar System at large by an ancient, arachnid-like extraterrestrial race, against which he and his family play a central role, aided by the pirate Jack Havock and his crew.

The story begins at Larklight, a house that orbits Earth's moon, where the Mumbys receive a visitor from the Royal Xenological Society, a Mr. Webster, who is revealed to be an extra-terrestrial resembling an enormous white spider.

Art and Myrtle leave in an escape pod and crash-land on the Moon, where they are encased with predatory larvae of the Potter Moth and freed by pirate Jack Havock and his crew.

Art is later taken before Professor Phineas Ptarmigan, formerly of the Royal Xenological Institute where Jack was imprisoned until he was twelve, who reveals that he wishes to use Larklight to destroy the Solar System, leaving the remains to the spiders whose ancestors had colonized the planetesimals.

The film was to be released on 1 January 2010, but after the death of the director Anthony Minghella in 2008, Kapur took over his unfinished movie New York, I Love You,[1] and postponed Larklight.