After a flirtation with the big screen, Justin Cronin’s post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy trilogy is now headed to the small screen via a pilot order by Fox for a possible 10-episode series adaptation.

Liz Heldens (Friday Night Lights) will write the pilot and Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) will direct. Cronin is on board as a co-producer.

Deadline Hollywood reports “The Passage‘s road to the screen started in 2007 when, in a fierce bidding situation … Fox 2000 landed the first book — then half-written — for $1.75 million … Originally developed as a feature, the producers eventually determined that the property would be better served as a TV series.”

Scott Free Productions is behind the series. Founded by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, The Martian) and his brother Tony Scott (Top Gun), the production company is no stranger to high concept adaptations. They are the team responsible for The Man in the High Castle based on Philip K. Dick’s classic 1954 SF title and AMC’s upcoming The Terror, based on Dan Simmons’s historical horror novel.

The trilogy consists of:

The Passage (PRH/Ballantine, 2010; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)

The Twelve (PRH/Ballantine, 2012; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)

The City of Mirrors (PRH/Ballantine, 2016; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)

Amazon plans to produce a six-part series based on Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a fantasy-comedy novel written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, 2007; trade pbk.; orig. pub date 1990; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

Slate reports BBC Studios will partner with Amazon and that Gaiman has already written all of the episodes. He will also act as showrunner and serve as a co-producer.

Amazon summarizes the series in its press release:

“Good Omens takes place in 2018 when the Apocalypse is near and Final Judgment is set to descend upon humanity … So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, and tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming war. And…someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.”

In the same release, Gaiman says “Almost thirty years ago, Terry Pratchett and I wrote the funniest novel we could about the end of the world … It became many people’s favourite book. Three decades later, it’s going to make it to the screen … I just wish Sir Terry were alive to see it.”

The Guardian points out that it has been adapted before, as an award-winning radio drama on BBC Radio 4 and there were a proposal for a film adaptation, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp as Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale, that did not move forward.

The series will premiere sometime in 2018. Casting information is not yet available.

Adaptations coming this week include three to the small screen, plus a troubled theatrical opening.

Debuting in theaters on January 27th is A Dog’s Purpose, a tearjerker about a dog named Bailey who comes back to life again and again (each time remembering his past).

The book was first published in hardcover in 2010 and spent over a year on the New York Times hardcover and trade paperback best seller lists. Anticipation of the movie has brought the title back to best seller lists. It is currently #1 on the USA Today list, up from #3 last week.

The film stars Dennis Quaid, Britt Robertson, Josh Gad, Peggy Lipton, and some great dogs. Unfortunately, it recently received unwanted attention due to accusations that one of the dogs was treated cruelly on set. Author Bruce Cameron has defended the production, but threats of boycotts by PETA caused Universal to cancel last week’s scheduled premiere. The general theatrical release is going forward.

Tie-in: A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans, W. Bruce Cameron (Macmillan/Forge; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Coming to TV on Wednesday, Jan. 25 is the opener of season two of Syfy’s The Magicians, based on the trilogy by Lev Grossman.

Entertainment Weekly reports the 13-episode run begins with the events depicted at the close of the first season and will include a more detailed look at Fillory: “Fillory is beautiful,” the magazine quotes actress Summer Bishil (who plays Margo) as saying, “It really feels like we’re somewhere magical when we’re in Vancouver because we’re always in some majestic forest and it’s lit like heavens are opening.”

Ttie-in: The Magician King: A Novel (TV Tie-In), Lev Grossman (PRH/Penguin; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

New on TV is the debut of the live-action adaptation of the Archie comics, Riverdale.

Den of Geek! says of the CW show, it is “not a sitcom” as readers of the comic might expect, “but a one-hour drama inspired by Twin Peaks.” Praising its casting and its production team, (it is written by Archie comics’ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and is executive produced by Greg Berlanti who also produced Arrow and Flash) the site says the show has its “finger on the pop culture pulse.”

In their rave review of the first four episodes, Den of Geek! also calls it “highly addictive” and writes “Yes, this is a show that mixes sex and murder and noir with Archie, but it does so in a way that is self-aware and instantly ready to shatter expectations … And you know what? It is magnificent.”

The show is set to premiere on Thursday, Jan. 26. A tie-in comes out at the end of the month: Road to Riverdale, Mark Waid, Chip Zdarsky, Adam Hughes, Marguerite Bennett (PRH/Random House; OverDrive Sample).

Also new, and streaming on Amazon, is Z: The Beginning of Everything, a mix of costume drama and bio-pic detailing the life of Zelda Fitzgerald (played by Christina Ricci) and her legendary marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

New York Magazine suggests, “Think of the Fitzgerald scenes from Midnight in Paris, but 50 percent grittier … and filmed in America.”

It is based on on Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler (Macmillan/ St. Martin’s Griffin; OverDrive Sample). The trade paperback bears a sticker tying it to the series. It starts streaming on January 27.

John le Carré’s beloved 1963 thriller, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (PRH/Penguin, reprint 2013; OverDrive Sample), is headed to TV as a limited-series adaptation created by AMC and the BBC.

It follows on the success of The Night Manager adaptation, which just won three Golden Globes (stars Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman each took home awards) and racked up a great deal of critical praise during its run.

New York Magazine reports that “Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) will write the entire series.” The Hollywood Reporter quotes le Carré as saying “I’m very excited by the project, and have great confidence in the team.” As well he might, many of the figures behind Night‘s success are back at the helm.

Nearly fifty years after the novel’s original publication, author William Boyd summarized its enduring power, for The Guardian, calling the story,

“a complicated act of deadly triple-bluff perpetrated by the British Secret Service against its enemies in the German Democratic Republic … At its centre is Alec Leamas, sent, he believes, on a clever under-cover mission of revenge but in fact the unwitting tool of even cleverer British brains with other motives”

Boyd goes on to praise its tone and skillful construction, writing “one of the sheer pleasures of the grade one espionage novel is in unravelling its multifarious complexities and le Carré handles the unspooling web of narrative and motive with exemplary poise … there is a clear sense in The Spy of a writer hitting his stride with resolute confidence.”

The book was adapted into a movie, the 1965 Oscar nominated film starring Richard Burton and directed by Martin Ritt (Hombre, Norma Rae).

The TV project is just getting underway so there is no word yet on its stars or air date.

The film adaptation of Hidden Figures continued to do well at the box office in its second week of wide release, boosting sales of both the original hardcover and the tie-in (now at #5 on USA Today‘s list). On TV, Netflix’s major launch of the adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is flying high, with strong reviews (example, the New York Times) and the expectation that there will be a season two.

Unfortunately, the news was not good for the wide release of Ben Affleck’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night, which failed to do well with critics as well as audiences.

This week, Lifetime brings back Beaches, as a TV movie on Jan. 21. Idina Menzel (Frozen) and Nia Long (The Best Man Holiday) star in the revival of the 1988 Garry Marshall film that Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey made famous. The weepy is based on the Iris Rainer Dart novel of the same name, published in 1985. There is no tie-in but the book is still in print (HaperCollins/Morrow Paperbacks, 2004).

For those that do not know the story, E! News offers a summary: “Beaches follows the serendipitous meeting of two young girls … who, despite vastly different lifestyles, maintain an unexpected, yet lifelong friendship. CC (Menzel) is an aspiring singer trying to make it work in Los Angeles until she’s discovered by a director who gives her big break, while Hillary (Long) is the daughter of a prominent civil rights lawyer who struggles to find her own destiny.”

Menzel, known for her award-winning voice, admitted to E! News she was worried about stepping into Midler’s shoes, saying if “I’m being completely honest, I was terrified to do it at first because I love the movie, it’s a beautiful, beautiful movie and both of those women—especially Bette Midler, for me—were idol[s] my whole life.”

Look away. It is here. The Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins, 1999 – 2006), begins streaming today.

Reviews are generally glowing. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, writing it is “an entertaining screwball fable for these topsy-turvy, post-truth times … Harris, absolutely marvelous as Olaf, [is] having a blast, and we share in his delight.”

The L.A. Times reviewer says “I have no complaints, and only praise.”

To promote the show, star Neil Patrick Harris has made the TV rounds, including the Today show and The Late Late Show with James Corden:

All sorts of media are on board, NPR even offers recipes inspired by the novels, perfect for a watch party.

Just released is the first brief preview of a new series based on the life of Albert Einstein, set to air on the National Geographic Channel in April.

Genius, the first scripted series from the cable network, reports Deadline Hollywood, is part of a planned “anthology drama– telling the stories of the world’s most brilliant innovators,”

The Einstein series is based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Academy Award-winner Geoffrey Rush stars as Einstein. Johnny Flynn (Lovesick) plays the younger Einstein while Emily Watson (The Theory of Everything) is Elsa, his second wife. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are the series executive producers.

The tie-in, with new cover art not yet final, is set for release on April 4th:

Einstein TV Tie-In Edition:
His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson
(S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Adaptations took home several prizes from last night’s Golden Globe Awards, although the big winner was the original, La La Land.

Technically, Moonlight, which won for Best Picture, is an adaptation, since it is based on an unpublished school drama project titled In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney. 

Fulfilling expectations, Viola Davis won as best supporting actress for her work in Fences. Denzel Washington, who starred and directed, was nominated as Best Actor, but did not win. Tie-in: Fences (Movie tie-in) by August Wilson (PRH/Plume).

Aaron Taylor-Johnson won as best supporting actor for Nocturnal Animals. The tie-in uses the original title of the novel, Tony and Susan, Austin Wright (Hachette/Grand Central Publishing; OverDrive Sample).

In TV, The Night Manager produced three winners. Tom Hiddleston won for best actor. Olivia Colman and Hugh Laurie both won for supporting roles. Tie-in: The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) by John le Carré (PRH/Ballantine Books; OverDrive Sample).

The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story also did well. It won for best series, with Sarah Paulson, who played Marcia Clark, winning for best actress. The show is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s 1996 book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson. The tie-in edition (Random House; OverDrive Sample) came out last September.

Elle won Best Motion Picture in the Foreign Language with its star Isabelle Huppert winning for best actress, drama. The film is based on Oh… by Philippe Djian (Gallimard, 2012; not published in the US).

After its limited release opening on Christmas Day, Live by Night expands nationwide this Friday. Based on Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night (Harper/ Morrow; Harperluxe; HarperAudio), starring Ben Affleck who also directs. 

The first Friday the 13th of the year offers an auspicious start to a beloved series best known for its unfortunateness. The long-awaited adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins, 1999 – 2006), begins streaming on Netflix.

The show stars Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf and Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, and Presley Smith as Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire.

Reviews thus far are good. The Chicago Tribune calls it a “weird, wonderful masterpiece.”

A.V. Club says “A fairy tale for macabre bookworms who’ve graduated from Roald Dahl but aren’t ready for Edward Gorey … This blend of tragedy and twee … [is] Kids stuff with adult sophistication, driven by two-part stories, outrageous visuals, and the scenery-chewing of big-name guest stars.”

The horror film Bye Bye Man, based on a chapter in the 2005 nonfiction book The President’s Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America by Robert Damon Schneck (Anomalist Books, 2005), also opens on the 13th.

The film stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Faye Dunaway, Douglas Smith, Cressida Bonas, Lucien Laviscount, and Douglas Jones and tells the supposedly true story of three friends who get into trouble when they mess around with a Ouija board.

The adaptation has had a bumpy path to the silver screen. Yahho! TV reported “the pic was first slotted in October around Halloween, then moved up to June, then back to December. Now, it’s being pushed to next year at a time when horror films traditionally have opened well.”

No reviews yet but Movie Pilot has a story about how “true” the story might be.

A tie-in edition came out in May 2016 under the title, The Bye Bye Man: And Other Strange-but-True Tales (PRH/TarcherPerigee; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Alone in Berlin, based on the German WWII novel, Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone (Melville House, 2010; OverDrive Sample) opens in a limited number of theaters and with no tie-in. Starring Brendan Gleeson, Emma Thompson, and Daniel Brühl, it received a mixed review from Variety when it appeared in the Berlin film festival. 

As NPR reported at that time, Fallada was a best selling author between WWI and II, with his books picked as book-of-the-month-club selections and adapted into Hollywood films (which got him blacklisted by the Nazis).

However, Every Man Dies Alone wasn’t published in English until 2009, after Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson heard about the book from the fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg and tracked it down.

When it finally did come out here, it was a best seller and became a NYT‘s Notable Book and one of The New Yorker‘s Favorite Fiction Books of the year.

The trailer has just been released for the TV series adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s The White Princess, set to air on the STARZ channel some time in 2017.

The sequel to BBC’s 2013 series The White Queen, adapted from the first novels of Philippa Gregory’s the “Cousins’ War” series, which also ran on STARZ, it features the same writer/director team and stars Jacob Collins-Levy as Henry VII, Jodie Comer as Princess Elizabeth, Essie Davis as Elizabeth Woodville, Joanne Whalley as the Duchesss of Burgundy, Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort and Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York.

The sound track features a haunting version of Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line by Halsey (incongruously, it is also used for the new Power Rangers trailer).

Below, Gregory, who serves as executive producer on the series, describes the history behind the novel.

The final book in the series, The King’s Curse was published in 2014.

Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986) will premiere on April 26, 2017.

To mark the release date, Hulu issued a set of first photos revealing some of the costumes and settings. The photos nudged the book higher on Amazon’s sales charts.

A tie-in has also been announced, The Handmaid’s Tale (Movie Tie-in), (PRH/Anchor, trade pbk; March 28, 2017)

The ten-episode dystopian drama stars Elisabeth Moss, who made her name on Mad Men, as Offred, the central character and a handmaid, a rare fertile woman who has become the property of the state, forced to conceive against her will. Joseph Fiennes stars as The Commander, to whom Offred is assigned. Yvonne Strahovski plays Serena Joy, The Commander’s wife. Jordana Blake, Samira Wiley, Max Minghella, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd, and O-T Fagbenle round out the cast. Atwood serves as a consulting producer.

Update: Gilmore Girls‘ Alexis Bledel has joined the cast, and a new trailer has been released.

Two high-profile film adaptations expand nationwide this week, Hidden Figures and A Monster Calls (see our coverage from their Oscar-qualifying opening week).

On NBC, a new series based on The Wizard of Oz begins.

Emerald City is billed as a “modern reimagining” of the backstory of L. Frank Baum’s famous tale.

After a rocky path to the screen, involving delays and major changes in the lead team, it finally premieres Jan. 6 at 9 EST and will run for 10 episodes in its opening season. Tarsem Singh (Mirror Mirror, Self/less) directs. Shaun Cassidy (Cold Case) serves as executive producer.

Deadline Hollywood says the show is “gunning for” the Game of Thrones label, writing it offers a “dark new take” in which “Dorothy [is] transported by tornado along with a K9 police dog into a mystical land of competing realms, lethal warriors, dark magic and a bloody battle for supremacy.”

ScreenCrush calls it an “ultra-ultra-ultra-gritty take” and details the cast: “Adria Arjona as Dorothy Gale (complete with K9 police dog Toto), Dracula star Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Scarecrow-type Lucas, Florence Kasumba as the Wicked Witch of the East, Joely Richardson as Glinda, [and] Vincent D’Onofrio as the Wizard of Oz.”

Julia Roberts is returning to the small screen (after HBO’s The Normal Heart) and will star as Eleanor Flood in a limited series adapting Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Semple, no stranger to TV herself (she worked on Beverly Hills, 90210, Mad About You, Suddenly Susan, and Arrested Development), will write the script for the adaptation, says The Hollywood Reporter.

“I’m giddy that Eleanor Flood will be brought to life by Julia Roberts … This will be a fun ride!” says Semple.

This is not Semple’s only project, she is also adapting Where’d You Go Bernadette for the big screen, with Cate Blanchett attached to star.

No news at this point on when either project will debut.

The nominees for the 2017 Golden Globes include a number of TV shows and films with book connections. As the LA Times puts it in their rundown, so many that “if you’re more at home in a library or a bookstore than a movie theater, you’re likely to find some reading material to curl up with while the rest of your family is gathered around the television set.”

Most of the nominees are already well known, as we have noted:

• Arrival
• Elle
• Fences
• Game of Thrones
• Hidden Figures
• Lion
• Mozart in the Jungle
• The Night Manager
• Nocturnal Animals
• Outlander
• The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

One is much less familiar, My Life as a Zucchini, an animated film from Switzerland based on Autobiographie D’une Courgette (J’Ai Lu Editions, 2003; no English translation), a YA novel by the French journalist Gilles Paris.

Selected as the Swiss entry for Best Foreign Language Film for this year’s Oscars, it just won the European Film Awards category for best European animated feature (here is its official entry page).

The story is about a young boy who becomes an orphan following the death of his alcoholic mother. Taken to an orphanage by a police officer who befriends him, the boy must learn to cope with his new life and surroundings as he interacts with other traumatized children.

Variety says “Leave it to a French-language stop-motion film to cut closer to the reality of the orphan experience than Annie, Matilda or any number of like-minded live-action melodramas … the cartoon is never afraid to be cute, but more importantly, it’s committed to being real.”

The Hollywood Reporter calls it “lovingly told and gorgeously rendered” and says “Though not as dark as the book that inspired it, nor as directly critical of the French welfare state [it is] not exactly a tale for all ages. That said, savvy distributors who know how to market high-end animated films to older audiences should get some decent mileage out of this Courgette.”

Variety reports that North American distribution rights have been sold, but so far, no release date has been announced.

Reflecting their major investment in the upcoming adaptation of
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, (HarperCollins, 1999 – 2006), Netflix is ramping up their promotional efforts. The third and probably not the final trailer was released last week.

The series begins streaming on January 13.

Expect to see more series from Netflix, which has is cutting back on movies in favor of original programming. As the company’s chief content officer noted at a recent conference, only one third of their customers watch movies.

No tie-ins have been announced.