You could let a book breathe on the small screen, rather than truncating it. Also, television had by this time grown into an incredible medium for adapting stories. Now it was in over 40 countries and had hit the New York Times bestseller list twice. When we did the first deal, the book hadn’t yet become a huge bestseller. :)īy the time I got the film rights back, WOOL was a much bigger global brand. There are great people in Hollywood, despite rumors to the contrary. And yet they were among the first people to reach out and congratulate me yesterday. I owe them for allowing me to take a chance elsewhere, even after they’d invested so much time, effort, and money into the project. This was a minor miracle, and it wouldn’t have happened were it not for the amazing folks at Fox and the fine people on Ridley and Steve’s teams. Every little step was an absolute dream.įive years ago or so, after all these efforts and close calls, I managed to get the rights back. I was just happy to be in the mix, having creative discussions with other artists, reading brilliant scripts, talking about storytelling and this world that I’d dreamt up. I’ve watched others go through development hell over the years and knew how easily the wheels can come off. But I kept my expectations low the entire time. The folks at Fox produced two excellent scripts and attached a few directors, and we nearly crested the hill once or twice. I was right, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I wrote a Twitter thread about this recently. I didn’t take the film deal seriously, because I knew that these projects don’t actually get made. Back then, all I wanted was to support myself with my art, rather than doing it on the side. It was going to be a better use of my time to write more stories.

Not because I was fielding calls from legends of cinema, but I was starting to earn more from my book sales than I was from selling other people’s books. It was around this time that I put in my two-weeks notice. It started back when I was still working in a bookstore, watching my sales take off, and I had to violate my boss’s policy of having cell phones at our desk because I was expecting a call from Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian. But the road to adapting the trilogy for the screen has been just as wild and twisty. I’ve written about the origin of the WOOL novels in the past, so I won’t bore you with that.

WOOL is coming to Apple TV in partnership with AMC. In fact, the news seems to be everywhere ( Variety, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Tor, Collider).

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