Spring 2025 Adaptation Preview
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And we are so pleased today to have a guest. Randy Winston is back with us of The Blacklist. And we are talking about...

Winter 2024, five adaptations. So stuff that's come out recently and then things we're looking for really through April 1st, I guess, is kind of the unofficial cutoff. Are we doing publishing seasons? Are we doing actual seasons? We're doing book riot publishing seasons, you know, since no one is consistent. But our publishing seasons here are January through April, May through August, and then September through December. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're going to start with things that have come out kind of in the last couple of months into awards season, things that maybe people haven't caught.

And I think not everything, but the stuff that seems a little bit sticky in the culture and the critical consciousness and maybe even at the box. Randy, we were just telling you, Rebecca and I have not had a chance to see Nickel Boys because it has not come to theaters near us. You probably know more. You all at The Blacklist know more about us than release strategy. I don't know why it hasn't opened around here yet. I'm a little confused about that. But having said that.

certainly a contender for multiple major awards in the big ones. And then so a part side of that, a major adaptation achievement and cinematic achievement all in one. Seems like sort of a singular achievement as these things go. So talk to me about your experience and do I have that kind of right?

Yeah, I am. You know, one of the beauties of living in New York, New York is very expensive. But one of the beauties of living here is we get the drop on movies before most other places. L.A., obviously. But yeah, for sure. I saw Nickel Boys maybe in December of last year. So last month.

And I took a buddy of mine who is a film savant, my buddy David Sheroff, who works in production here in New York on a lot of different projects.

And funny enough, David was the person who introduced me to the Blacklist maybe 14 years ago. We were both living in Georgia. He handed me a script that was on the annual Blacklist because he was working on set in Athens for the spectacular now. Anyway, anytime there's a movie like Nickel Boys that comes out, me and David take some time. We go to Angelica and we sit down and watch it. And then, you know, we sit afterwards and we talk about it.

And obviously if Colson Whitehead is writing a book, you read it. - Obviously. - And then thinking about adaptation, I mean,

obviously everybody has their own take on what makes a good adaptation. I think it is, I think it is a high wire act to adapt a Colson Whitehead novel because it's, it's Colson Whitehead and it's, it's the pros is the interiority of the characters. And so that's, and, and obviously any adaptation is a high wire, but I, I think the more literary merit it has, the more of a challenge is going to be.

That being said, what Ramelle Ross did with that film is phenomenal. And I don't like to spoil things for people. So I won't do any spoilers. Great. But I will say, you know, obviously, when I think about what I want an adaptation to do,

I think about the one of my mentors from the new school MFA program, Helen Shulman, every, every workshop, she would ask the person who was about to be workshopped to read. So you would read the piece, a very short piece of the story that you had workshopped those past two weeks. And at the end, it gets really quiet. And Helen says, so what's this story about? And then we go around the room and,

And everyone like that's how we start that conversation. What is the story here? What's the story here? And so I think with any adaptation, like it's not you're not going to catch every detail. But what's the story here? And, you know, this is this is a this is a very sad story. You know, this takes place in the 1960s in Tallahassee, Florida, with a character named Elwood Curtis.

And, you know, he's been unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformer, formatory school and called Nickel Academy. And they treat these kids so bad. And, you know, there's death that are happening, like mysterious deaths that are happening and people being buried in unmarked graves. And it is devastating.

And how do you like how but how do you tell that story? I think Ramel did very well with first person with the first person camera POV. Because, you know, the one thing you think about in a scenario like that is like, OK, we can tell that story. But to put the camera in an actor's hands and thus we become the audience, we become that person.

It really changes the way you experience that story and that film and how you walk out of there. So bravo to Ramel. Obviously, kudos to Colson Whitehead. It's remarkable. It's going to do big at the Oscars, I hope. I want to pick up the thread that you mentioned of how the more literary merit a book has, the harder it is to adapt. And Colson Whitehead just lives in the zone of literary merit. The Underground Railroad was not an easy project for him.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, truly. And you know, the other thing I think about with a story like that, it is very much a story about friendship. And I think for somebody like myself, if you tell me going into reading that book that I'm going to read something that's traumatic, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. But the way that it was sold to me was this is a story about friendship.

And I will read a story about friendship most days. So, yeah. And I thought that was very well done as well. I would Curtis and Turner, the two friends in that story and how they, you know, deal with what's happening around them and what's happening between them. I thought it was done really well. Today's episode is brought to you by Flatiron Books, publisher of Ambition by Natalie Keller Reinhart. Cheers.

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I guess as a frame for the rest of the discussion too, Rebecca and I talked about this a lot, like those of us who love a book that are getting ready to see an adaptation or hear an adaptation come out, we want two books

We wanted to reconcile two impossible things, right? We want it to be the book, but we also want to add something that we didn't get by just reading the book because we've already read the book. And those two diametrically opposed things are kind of the always already of someone who cares about the source text coming into it. And in a lot of ways, the Nickel Boys is the least...

I don't know, stylistically complicated of Whitehead's works. And so it was sort of ready to have more of an opinionated direction, I guess is one way of putting it, right? Whereas if you're doing, I don't know, I'll pick something that's not been adapted, like Zone One or John Henry Days or The Intuitionist, which I'm still waiting for. Gosh, that's going to be fun on screens. In a lot of ways, the director, I would imagine, would work a lot harder to represent the sort of the literary pyrotechnics or the specific, you know,

unusualness that's being brought here. Whitehead is so careful with the story and it's his one true sort of historical fiction. Well, Sag Harbor, but that's more of a... Is that technically a memoir or was it? It's fiction. It's fiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that and Sag Harbor and also I guess it makes then Sag Harbor is also very light touch in terms of speculative fiction elements and something like that. So it sounds like that needle has been threaded here of like, okay, the source text and then we're going to do something that

only movies can do or that movies can do especially well. And that is really key. And I guess going alongside that, Randy, we're going to talk about a couple of things that I've talked about the show. Rebecca's talked about the show already in the form of Slow Horses,

It's kind of the Apple stock, it seems to me, of adaptations right now. You just rely... It's going to go up and to the right, and you just... You don't trade Apple. You own Apple. You don't trade Slow Horses. You watch Slow Horses. Tell me about... Randy doesn't know he's auditioning to be the third chair on this podcast with his picks for adaptations, but when he emailed me and said Slow Horses, I was like, come sit next to me. Oh, my goodness. Slow Horses. Wow. I mean...

Can I have coffee with Gary Oldman? For real. Maybe at arm's length with Jackson Lamb. Maybe on the other side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give him his hygiene pole distance there. I mean, what a character. What a character. Yeah.

I love Slow Horses so much. And I actually did not know that was an adaptation until I started watching the first season. And that is a show that we binge watch here at the house. Or if we're on schedule, we'll just watch it as they come out. But wow. I mean, I'm big in the spy thrillers. I love those stories. And, you know, having the guys that...

didn't make it or you know hey listen you suck at your job you're gonna go work over here it's a great it's an unbelievable idea it's an unbelievable with a legend by the way who also is just kind of like over the hill but not really

Having the time of his life. Like you can just tell Gary Oldman is going to play this character as long as they will let him. It's so much fun. And it's also, it's appointment viewing in my house too. Like in a season where multiple things are available on streaming, if it's like Friday night and we're like, okay, there's a slow horses. There are all these other things. Obviously slow horses is the one we're going to watch. I'm curious to know from you all, like how did, how did you all find slow horses? Like, how did you find your way to it? And,

Do you historically watch spy thrillers? That's a great question. I actually do know how I found out about it. Jeff and I both listen sometimes to the Watch podcast from The Ringer, hosted by Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. They're great, yeah. They're really wonderful. The year that...

Slow Horses was going to debut at the beginning of every year. They do a like most anticipated shows of the season and the year that Slow Horses was coming out. One of them was like was giving the pitch of like so it's the spies that suck at their job and Gary Oldman is their boss and it's based on these books. Those guys both read a lot of like spy and crime thrillers. Yeah, hard world crime.

Yeah. So they had read the McCarran books and were stoked about it. And I was like, this sounds like it's in the pocket of things that my husband and I are both going to like. And I think we knew after the first episode that it was going to work for us. I haven't gone and read any of the other books. And this is actually like kind of I like a spy thriller. I'll watch The Bourne Identity anytime it's on cable or like on a flight once a year. But it's not one of my main genres. And I feel like Slow Horses just does it differently. Yeah.

Yeah, I heard about it through Soho first, because I'd heard about the book. And then when I saw the name, because that's the name of the first book in the series, I think McCarran actually calls it the Slough House series. I think that's what Soho calls it. So, you know, I think I've actually talked to some of the marketing people over there. It's, of course, a wonderful boon to them. But since...

Since the series, it's hard. It's not like the Harry Potter series where everyone knows it's Harry Potter and it's not Jackson Lamb and the case of the corrupt paramilitary organization or, you know, each individual episode. But that's how I first heard about it. And again, a shared watch in my house. So like, you know, I think we're all talking here about some like good for all parties in your household series.

Well, not my kids, but my partner and I, this is like our first draft picked. If we have any show that's available, Nudos to Watch, we'll probably pick Slow Horses first if it's available. I don't think also you can discount, and they've been very smart about this, that there's a teaser for the next season at the end of the season, and you know it's coming out, and it's regular, and they're having a good time, and they throw all the money at it. It looks like a billion dollars. Yeah.

And it's so consistently good. You know, six to eight episodes. You get a couple episodes where you don't quite know what's going on yet, a la The Wire, and then you figure it out. And it's just a great time. I mean, I feel like you do this for a million years. And...

In the first season, they did the thing, sort of the Ned Stark, which is you cannot trust that your favorite character necessarily is going to make it. So it keeps you on your toes, which I think is super important for someone like me, who I'm not going to watch 59 seasons of NCIS because the stakes are just too low. I just know what's going to happen. I like to be kept on my toes a little bit. And Slow Horse is like that right combination of

You feel like you're in safe hands, but you also can't get comfortable, which is a pleasurable kind of place to be. You know what? I will say this, too. The writing is really good and the acting is really good. And it also, you know, Franklin brought this up when him and I were talking about adaptations last month.

It's that thing where a novel is really good as a TV series. It's really hard to squeeze a novel into a film. People do it, and we'll talk about that, but it's just hard to do, whereas a short story or a short story collection, something like that, you could probably get off a short story in a film. And I think that's what helps how slow horses work as well. Yeah.

So the other one that you mentioned here, which I also love, Say Nothing, based on the Patrick Radden Keefe book of the same title. I love the book. When I saw this was happening, I was so excited. I don't feel like it's gotten as much uptake more widely. Maybe I'm wrong about this, at least in the very small part of the world that I inhabit.

So what do we look for in adaptation? And I think especially when it comes to narrative nonfiction, one thing film, especially a series can do is have, you can have a relationship with the characters in a sort of a different way than you can, especially when it comes to narrative nonfiction. There's a certain remove even from a real historical person, especially, but the way Dolores and Marian Price are portrayed in this particular, like Dolores Price, and I don't have the actress's name in front of me. I'm ashamed. I'll look it up while someone else is talking about,

One of my great professors when I was an undergraduate said, you know, you know a great character when you miss them when they're not on the screen or on the page. And every time Dolores Price wasn't on the screen, I missed her. And in a way, I think, and it's been a while since I read the book, I think maybe one thing that's difficult for people is this is more of an antihero and it's terrorism. And I think it's less, it doesn't go down as easy as even something like Slow Horses because it's,

I don't know if moral gray area is the right thing, but you're going to identify with her and then lament what she does. And then if you do the next move of overlay her motivations and actions with other geopolitical things, I don't really get into that right now. It puts you in an uncomfortable position. And I don't know that's the kind of thing. Whereas another Hulu series, I thought Shogun was my favorite show of the year coming in to say nothing. I think Say Nothing eclipsed it.

But I think it was because of this moral grayness where Shogun is so outside of sort of the contemporary realm of morality that it has a fantasy element almost because it feels so distant. Randy, what was especially excellent or what drew you to Say Nothing and how did you experience it? So I love Say Nothing. And I actually did the reverse where I've been doing this lately. It's really weird where I watch first and then read the book. Uh-huh.

I want to hear more about that. Which is weird. Historically speaking, I don't do that. But we binge watched Say Nothing in two days. What really drew me to it was this, not idea, is this reality that there's grief after violence. And there's like when you were the person doing the violence or I'm sorry, I should take that back.

There's grief after violence when you are engaging in it, whether it's happening to you or you are the one initiating. And then the memory that comes with that, because that's something that you have to now live with for the rest of your life. And then the decisions that you're making. And we're watching Dolores in particular, specifically, we're watching her live.

everything that she was doing. And it's one thing when you question, like, why did I eat that hamburger on Monday? I knew my, but then there's another thing to question, like, you know, why did I blow up a building or like, why did I, you know, blow up a neighborhood? Like, why did I do these things like that? That's something that is like really, that was really intriguing to me.

And the fact that, you know, when I did go and read the book, like that's happening there and you get it even more because obviously it's a book. So you get the end, you get more of the story and you see where the influences came from. Like, obviously we knew her father,

And her mother, the sisters were influenced by their parents, but we didn't know to what extent. And then you see it and you go, oh, wait, wait, this is a lifestyle. Like this is how people are raised. And so I think as I get older, I'll be 39 this year, I'll be 40 next year.

Like there's this reality that has to be understood that there's not like, obviously people do good things. People do bad things, but also people do both. And like, what, like, what do we do with that? And I think that this is a great, this is, this was a great story on that, on that thread. And obviously, um,

It's not, you know, you can take these films and these books in a vacuum, but also there's a history that happened before that story as well. And I and I and I think that's important for folks to remember when they're watching these shows and when they're reading these books is the story that happened and the history that happened before those stories. Yeah.

Yeah, and I was got to thinking about it too. I got to think about Remains of the Day by Isha Groh the other day for, I don't remember why, but that's also a story about someone who puts their trust in someone or something and realizes at the end, he's like, damn it. I may have misplaced that and I believed it at the time and what do I do with it? Maybe we didn't, you know, and I think that kind of

after-action doubt or perspective is not something that's talked about very often, both on the winners and losers of history side. And not for nothing, one of the singular episodes of TV I've ever seen when they're in prison. I mean, kind of as a standalone episode, when Marion and Dolores are in prison. I've never seen anything like that.

And frankly, if you don't want to watch the whole season, that episode alone has a lot. I mean, again, I don't want to spoil it, but they're in prison. It's history, so it's not really a spoiler, but they go on a hunger strike. And the way it's presented and the realities of that, and the iron will of these young women is un... And that's not hyperbole for me. I found it hard to believe that actually happened. They actually did that. So...

Say nothing. Hey, Rebecca, you steer us from here. We got Randy's two out of the way that he conveniently picked things that we love. That was very kind and generous of him. Where do you want to go? I'll just run through some highlights. And Randy, if you've seen any of these, jump in. I haven't seen all of them. So other things that came out recently that folks might want to pick up or maybe haven't realized are adaptations. Queer, starring Daniel Craig, adapted from...

The William S. Burroughs autobiographical novel, written in 1950s, came out in the 1980s, and Daniel Craig plays a character that's functionally an avatar for Burroughs. Have you seen this? I haven't had a chance to see it yet. I have not had a chance to see that yet. I really want to see this. Yeah.

I think that's this weekend for me. The Return, which I saw over the holidays based on the end of The Odyssey when Odysseus comes back to the island, finds his wife who is supposed to be picking a new king. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. It was written by John Colley, Edward Bond, and Uberto Pasolini, directed by Pasolini. One of the best things I saw last year. Rebecca, you came out of the theater texting like you were coming back from Troy. I'm happy.

I'm having a moment here where like I saw that and then we got the news that Christopher Nolan is adapting The Odyssey next year. Oh, Randy, the face you made just now was so great.

Have you not heard this? Am I your... I cannot wait. I've been like... I hate when they do those announcements because now I have to wait. Yeah. Come back and do Hot Greek Summer with us next summer. Do they do those, Randy, so that we shut up already? So you don't have to wonder what Nolan's doing or to build hype earlier? What is the strategy behind that kind of...

wait for three years. Well, if something, something was happening there where they were slowly releasing names of actors who were being picked up for this thing that Christopher Nolan is doing. So obviously when that starts happening, everyone's like, Hey, what's, so I don't know if the timing of the announcement of what the film was going to be was because of the pressure that they were receiving or if it was just a

a part of the strategic rollout. But now we're all just sitting on, we're just waiting. Yeah. We were just like dream casting on our episodes. Well, the scale of the production is going to be such that there's going to be a lot of loose lips at some point, right? You can't hide, you know, if you have Robert Pattinson in a toga or Nwango turning people into swine, like it's going to come out pretty quick that we're shooting the Odyssey. There's not a lot of plausible deniability to be had around that.

I do. I think I heard rumor that cell phones are not allowed on set. That doesn't mean that people won't say anything, but it does mean that it'll be hard to get secret footage. Yeah, a screen tap of Pattinson smoking a cigarette while on the beaches of Ithaca or something like that.

So, yeah, excited for that. And also, I mean, I know it's centered to our heart that in Fines and Binoche, we get an English patient reunion, Rebecca, too. Yes. Rebecca and Vanessa, Randy, on our show talked about Night Bitch, both the book and the movie. Can we talk about Night Bitch? Let's talk about it. I'll sit down. I'll have my cigarette now while you couldn't commiserate. Please put your face back in your hands, Randy, because that's how I felt about this adaptation. Wow. Wow.

I mean, first, Amy Adams is, you know, Amy Adams doesn't do wrong on screen at all.

I mean, a story about motherhood and a very different take on it too. And not to say that that story is unfamiliar, but on screen, I haven't seen that much. And I don't know why, but very much a story about the body and the effects of changes that the body has and how that affects the folks around you, your relationships, and also how a mother sees her child as

And what sacrifice as you're trying to raise a human being. I just, I was deeply in love with the story. Did you read the book? So I have the book here. I have not read it yet, but, and this is the thing. I know that some people say, oh, you, you, you read the book first and you watch it. But in this case, this character is so in like, and so intriguing and so big. I want to read the book now because I know going in that,

What I'm looking for, what I'm sitting down and I'm going to be excited about is the interiority of this character. Yeah. Because I know I'm not getting all of that on screen. So now I'm thrilled because now I get to sit with this book that Rachel wrote and I'm like, yeah. Yeah. I had the inverse experience. I read Night Bitch last month, like in one sitting on a plane and just like couldn't put it down. It is phenomenal. And I came back and told Jeff, I have no idea how they're going to do this on screen because

I think they did as good of a job as is possible to, like, capture that interiority, the body horror stuff. That was pretty good. Like, I was surprised how much some of those scenes were similar to, like, some of the scenes in The Substance. And maybe that's just because I saw them close together. But the ending of the book, like...

If you thought the movie is sharp, the book is so much sharper. And the ending of the book is really, really different. So I struggled with the ending of the movie because I thought they softened up a lot of the message. So I think you are in for a treat. Like, please call me after you read the book. That's what I figured. I was...

Even though I enjoyed it, I was a little bit like, oh, I wasn't expecting that this would be the way they ended this story. So I am excited to know that that is not... Because I don't... Did you read Eileen by Tessa Monson? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I'm almost done with that book. Okay. And I know that there's a film...

And I know that the film can. It does not. I know it can't because Otessa is like. She's willing to be so gross. She's real gross. Yeah, real gross. And I'm I don't know what this says about me, but I'm enjoying that. I'm enjoying that writers are doing that on the page. Yeah. That they're letting their characters just go. And obviously that's just like the early Otessa. So the books after Otessa.

I'm excited about it. Well, it's an interesting point. We were talking about this in a different context of Miranda July's all fours and frankly, fourth wing by Rebecca Rios the other day, where, uh,

because of ratings and box office and whatever, movies aren't going to let the freak flag fly in a way that actually pretty, not run of the mill, but stuff that's on the front table of a Barnes & Noble you walk into, if they shot it shot for shot, would be X-rated or NC-17 or something like that. You can be a lot weirder on the page. Yeah, you can be a lot weirder on the page. And I guess that goes a little bit to what we were talking about with the Burroughs. And it's rare where the movie...

punch is past where the book does. It's much more likely for the movie to have to pull a punch a little bit. But having said that, you know, you can get some that are pretty weird. And Night Bitch is an interesting test case. I'm just glad they tried this. I look forward to it. I haven't seen the adaptation. I did read the book over break.

All the dollars for Rachel Yoder. Just let's keep her going. That's right. Yes. You will enjoy it very much. I don't really know what to do with biopics because there's biopics of, you know, biographies of celebrities every which way. I know this one is more directly. We're going to talk about A Complete Unknown for a minute, adapted from Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald. Chalamet quickly being the...

The Clown Prince of Adaptations. We've got Dune. We've got... What's the Asimov now? I've just read My Roman Year. I can't remember. Come on. Call me by your name. Call me by your name, yeah. And then we did a Wonka version and now we're doing this. And he's on a hell of an Oscar campaign. Yeah. So it's going to be him and Craig? Is that who we're looking at for... I mean, they're going to be duking it out for Best Actor, I think, when we're looking at Queer and Chalamet and some others. Oh, maybe. We'll find out next week. The Oscar nominations come out on the 17th. Yeah. This is...

When I saw, I am not interested in this. I will watch this eventually. I love Dylan and fear Dylan and am confused by Dylan. I actually thought I'm Not Here, which came out a while ago. Kate Blanchett, right? Where like six or eight actors played different versions of Dylan. I was like, I'm good. Someone did a Dylan thing that's as or more interesting than Dylan. I'm sure this is great. It looks good. I like Jim Mangold.

But I'm kind of nowhere with this. Randy or Rebecca, are you excited about this? I know it's out there in the ether and it's a Chalamet story. Maybe this movie doesn't get made if Chalamet's not interested. I think it's an interesting choice for him, frankly. But as a movie watcher, I'm like at a 5 out of 10 of how much I'm going to get my ass out of my chair and go to a movie theater and see it. He's on a hot streak. And I must say, I will watch...

I will give anything that Timothy's in a chance. Yeah. So I will watch it. I don't know that I'm excited about it. Yeah. That's how I feel about it. I will. I will watch it. Will I watch it in theaters? Yet to be determined, but I will. I will watch. Yeah.

That's about where I am. I don't have any particular relationship to Dylan. I'm pretty neutral. I'm most interested in what happens when actors play singers and they do the singing themselves. Like that is the part of this that I'm the most curious about. And Chalamet is getting pretty good reviews for what he was able to do performing someone with a really unique voice. So curious about that. But I feel like this is going to be a like...

February, Friday night streamer for me, probably. I mean, let's be honest. Dylan's not Pavarotti. Like, you know, in terms of singers, you're going to have to try to imitate. Well, but he's very singular. Yeah, but it almost makes it better. It's like doing an impression, right? I mean, it's not a... His vocal instrument is not his gift, I guess, to put it charitably at this point. I mean... I love Dylan.

Timothy has not let me down yet. I will say that. What's the worst movie he's been in? It's not really been in a bad one. Like Beautiful Boy didn't do very, I mean, it wasn't bad in it. It wasn't a bad movie. It's just kind of low key. All right. Now, the last one that Rebecca has down here, Randy, looks like a pick I had not heard of. Me neither. Pedro Paramo. You want to talk about that real quick? Oh my God. So this is actually a translation. This is translated literature, which in terms of adaptations, I don't see a lot, or at least I haven't watched a lot.

I don't want to do that. But I read the book. Holy crap. And obviously, I won't spoil it for you, but I'll tell you this. On the first page,

This man is with his mom. She's on her deathbed. And she says, you need to go find your father and take back everything that he's promised us. And so this guy sets out on this journey to this town to find his lost father. And it's like this rural Mexican town and things happen immediately. Yeah.

Things start happening immediately. And that's all I'm going to say. I'm so sold. The writing is insane. It is. It's like magical realism. There's spirits. There's goat. Like there's, there's a lot happening in this town is steeped in Mexican culture. It is so good. And the show, and it has a lot to do with the afterlife, the show or the movie is on Netflix. So I watched the movie recently and,

And, you know, it for people who love the book, it does the thing that folks that generally want to see an adaptation does, which if it follows the book to the T, which, you know, there are people, there are camps of folks that will say, I want the director to be creative and try something different. And then there are camps to say, don't mess this up.

And so for people to say, don't mess this up, I think that that movie really follows the book as close as possible. And it's not one of those things where it's not like one of those films or books where you have to spend a big budget. So it's very much within the range of somebody being able to follow closely.

How did you first encounter the book? Actually, a good friend of mine from MFA, we were in the bookstore at the Center for Fiction, and she picks it up and she throws it at me and she goes, you're buying this. It's the best way. So I read it over the break. It was it is it's not long. It's a novella. Yeah.

It's incredible. The writing is absolutely beautiful. If in terms of literary merit, it's like one of those timeless pieces. It's really good. And the cast in the film, a one.

That reminds me, and I didn't think of it until just now, which I think is maybe telling about what its relative Q rating is right now. December 11th on Netflix, we got an eight-episode adaptation of 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garbanzo Marquez, and I haven't heard anything about it. I haven't heard anything about this. Reviews have been okay. It's eight episodes long. It's Spanish language. That's what triggered for me Randy's translations. Oh, yeah, that reminds me. I should be prime candidate to watch this. I think the problem is...

Not my favorite Marquez. It's been a million years since I read it, but I'm interested. Eight episodes? I don't know. I'm just not sure what to do with this. I don't know. Why am I less excited about this? I can't figure this out. Did you love the book? I did. That's why. You love the book.

So I have to hate the book to be excited? That doesn't make any sense, Randy. Come on. One of my good friends, Tracy Thomas, told me, she said, Randy, it's the boring books that I'll get excited about the most. I love the book. I don't want us to end opposite. That's really interesting. I think...

I'm somewhere in the middle where if I really, really love the book, I have to have like a ton of faith in the director that it's going to be good. It's like, I feel good about nickel boys. Cause I believe that Rommel Ross will do something great. I love Gilead and that whole series by Marilyn Robinson. I am very nervous about Martin Scorsese. Yeah.

Like Jeff and I have talked about how nervous we are about Takeo ITT doing Clara and the Sun. Like big open questions about that. But if I liked a book or there's some hook in it like Night Bitch where it's like, how will they do this? If there's a big question for me about how something will be translated, the curiosity will bridge the gap for me there. That'll get me to see something. I will.

I will say one more thing about Pedro, about translated literature in general. I love that the film honored that.

Because it's all Spanish and, you know, you read the the closed caption. And so and I did that and it was great. But I just love that they the book, you know, obviously the book that I have is in English, but it was translated. But, you know, the author who wrote it originally is Juan Rufo. And so they honor that. And I appreciate that a lot. It's really good.

I know that Rebecca has written on her calendar that Dog Man, based on the series by Dave Pilkey, is coming out in January. Is that a midnight release showing? When I tell you that I did not know what Dog Man was about until I Googled this yesterday, this is the glory of not having small children. But I do know that Dov Pilkey has made a bajillion dollars on this, and this is going to be a big deal. Awesome.

Randy, can you give me a synopsis of the dogma? I do not know the dogma. Seriously, Rebecca, you're actually the person that put it on my radar. So now I have to dive in.

Well, if you have a six to nine year old, there's a good chance this is the most important cultural document on their bookshelf, Dog Man. And I'm going to sound like I'm having a stroke while I describe it. Essentially, there's a police officer that gets into a terrible accident and they bring him back to life by fusing him with a dog. So it's a police officer with the head of a dog and the body of a man and the strength of both, Randy. Yeah.

I mean, when you think about it, think of all the things you could do with the head of a dog. Not one comes to mind. They got big names for this. Isla Fisher and Poppy Lou. It's going to make a million dollars. I mean, it's going to make a bunch of money. There's like 16 in the series. Every time one comes out, it sells 200,000 copies in a week. But it's like saying there's a 12th planet in the solar system that we know nothing about because it's just seven and eight and nine-year-olds. But that's coming out.

Going a little bit less and more relevant to me at the same point. I'm not sure where we are in the Bridget Jones series, but apparently there's another one coming out. Rebecca, you put this in here. You probably did a little bit of half-assed internet research. It is. Yes. Is this actually based on one of these? Is there a fielding book based on one of these? No, this is not the extended fielding universe. It's not about the boy. I think this is just the continuation of nostalgia that's produced for millennials. This is millennial wish fulfillment, basically.

It is Renee Zellweger. Hugh Grant is coming back. We are, you know, farther into Bridget Jones's life now. Apparently she has become a widow. I don't know that I've seen a Bridget Jones movie since the first one.

in the log so now she's a single mom and she's you know being held up by her community which includes the character that Hugh Grant plays Daniel who is her former lover and also her former boss sometimes at the same time and it's she's getting on the apps it's how Bridget Jones got her groove back I think is what's happening here it's coming out February 13th like

This is on the list because it's interesting, but also this is a pretty dry season for new adaptations as evidenced by the fact that the first 45 minutes of this episode are all things that have already come out. I mean, wait, are we, we're still going? Yeah. Okay. We're still going. If April is a part of the season.

Okay. April is part of the season. The Amateur by Robert Littell. That's also on the list. Yes. Yes. We're really looking forward to that. Obviously, CIA, spy thriller, right up my alley. Can't wait. Yeah. I saw the trailer for this at the theater last week, and it looks...

fantastic. So as you were saying, Randy, it's based on the novel by Robert Littell. It's about a CIA cryptographer whose wife is killed by a terrorist group. So he's like a desk guy. He sits at a desk and he cracks codes. Yeah, he's a guy in the chair. He's a guy in the chair. He blackmails the agency to let him be the one to go after the bad guys. And the trailer's got scenes with him like

trying to shoot a gun and one of the regular CIA operatives being like, you're not the kind of guy who could kill a man. And he's like, maybe not with a gun, but maybe I can crack the pool that he's swimming in and that'll kill him. Like that kind of stuff. It does look phenomenal. It's starring Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, and John Bernthal shows up in the trailer. So I'm automatically in love him too.

Yeah, you got to like the burn. It looks great. I think this could work. It's like, you know how they do Uber for X? They could do a whole series of movies like, what if X was suddenly a spy all of a sudden? A nurse, you know, a door dash driver, a plumber. All of it would be great. John Wick-esque revenge. Like the guy is set out for revenge. It's his wife this time instead of his dog. Married with the Liam Neeson, I'm a man with a very particular set of skills taken thing. Like, I'm here for this combo. Yeah, yeah.

But you know what? MacGyver worked. MacGyver works. These super elaborate ways of killing people. It's just the Rube Goldberg of death. It would have been a great show title. It is known that that works.

Yeah. Unironically excited for Paddington in Peru coming out February 14th, 2025. The first two Paddington movies are absolute gems. I had zero expectation walking to the first one. That's when my kids were like five and seven. And literally anything we could all four go and watch, I was excited to go see in the movie theater and eat popcorn, even if to dissociate for a couple hours, but generally found them both enchanting.

Paul King, who directed the first two, is not coming back for this one. I don't know if it's contract or whatever. He was involved in the story, executive producing it. That can be smokescreen. I'm not really sure. A little worried about the politics of Peru and, you know, having a zany time there. Not so sure how well that's going to go. But Ben Whishaw's voicing of Paddington is delightful, and Emily Mortimer, Hugh Bonneville, and a bunch of other...

people there i'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt though i will say my kids are also several years older so they're not quite in prime paddington zone we're all kind of like oh yeah we'll see that but is this a trip to the theater for y'all at this point or is this a friday night at home on the couch in february in portland we're looking for a reason to get out of the house so we might we might hit a 9 a.m you know i love a saturday morning tickets at some point for that

Randy, are you on the Paddington train? I don't know that I'm on the train, but I have nieces. They like it. And so, you know, whatever they like, I like. I'll watch it. Yeah. Following that, I think, is the movie of the season in a lot of ways, at least for me. Mickey 17 coming out, directed and written by Bong Joon-ho, featuring Tony Collette, Stephen Lin, Mark Ruffalo, and, of course, starring...

Robert Pattinson. The trailer is a trip. He's an expendable. So a bunch of clones are made of him to do different jobs, and they get killed in a bunch of different ways. Robert Pattinson is making a choice, I will say, with the voice he is choosing to do with this. I think it kind of works on me. All of a sudden, this is the first movie since Parasite for Bong, and a bigger budget, sci-fi, tonally strange. Yeah.

Based on the book. Yeah, it's Mickey seven. There's seven or is that a typo? There's some, there's a technical reason. Ten is more. Ten is more. It's 17 for the film, but I forgot what it is. This is the Holy grail of adaptation, which is big. I like big stories. This is a big world, big story. Like this is it. Yeah. And Bong Joon-ho, like, come on. Yeah. I'm excited for this. Where are you on this? It's big. Like when I read a book,

If my imagination starts to take me off the path, I know I want to see it. I want to see what it looks like. Mainly because it's like, if you think about something like the hunger games and minority report, if you read those, you're like, whoa, this is interesting. What, what would a director do with this?

And I think that's what this is doing. Also, I don't want to jump ahead. I'm not going to jump ahead. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. That's fine. So I'm really excited for that. An interesting release time, March, for a big movie like that. It kind of feels like it's not quite a award season fodder, but also not quite a summer blockbuster. So I guess you put it in something like March. Randy would know better than I about how those things are positioned. One I added here is,

I watched the trailer with my kids and we looked at each other like, I think we want to see this. Also, I feel like maybe that was a generative AI trailer, but it's also real. It's The Electric State, which is based on the graphic novel by Simon. Was that what you were just about to jump in? Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, and as far as I can tell, Chris Pratt's wig is the third lead in this particular movie. The Russo brothers sort of ending their relationship

Netflix sojourn before they re-enter the warm embrace of Marvel money over there. It's not gone horribly well, I would say, for their experiences with Netflix. So I didn't look up the synopsis on purpose because I'm trying to describe what I think is happening here based on the trailer. We are in a post-apocalypse. We are post-post-apocalypse, right? Randy's going to correct me. He's nodding like he actually knows what the hell he's talking about, which is always nice to have someone who does.

Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt kind of do a wolf and cub, it sounds like, where Chris Pratt is more of a wizened experience. I don't know why his frosted tips, that's important to his skill set, I'm not really sure. And what's happened is these giant stuffed animal robots rebelled against their human overlords, it sounds like, and then things went south after that. So we're sort of after that rebellion, and it looks like they're going to team up with some of these leftover hybrid robots

bonkers looking creatures and

Oh, you're very close. Randy, am I close? How far away am I? It's dystopian sci-fi. And it's about a teenage girl and her toy robot traveling west. And yeah, this is after. So society disparaged by high tech and virtual reality systems. I love this. Not only is it big, but it's timely. It kind of sounds like a Last of Us vibe. That pairing between them. Is that the right mode? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't really tell who it's for because it's not a kid show. I mean, is it? It's not a kid show, but it's also not Last of Us. I don't think it's going to have a lot of like really gory stuff. So it's kind of in between, which is kind of where Millie Bobby Brown has found a sweet spot sort of with the Enola Holmes and the King Kong Godzilla stuff. I think if you have Millie Bobby Brown and at this point, it means like if you're 14, you're going to be interested in this kind of title. And

I mean, they spent all the money on it. I've never seen some of the images they're showing in this trailer. I'm not sure that my brain could make any kind of sense out of it, but I think I'll try firing this up. Based on a graphic novel, is that right? Based on a graphic novel. Yeah, a Swedish graphic novel. I believe it's Swedish. Simon Stalenhag, my...

It looks... I really... I like to go on YouTube with my family when we're not sure what to watch and just watch upcoming movie trailers. And I'm not sure if you guys have this experience. There's so many fake ones now. The AI stuff has made so many fake ones. We got taken in by...

a new there was a trailer for the next jason bourne starring matt damon terrible and they had like generative ai i was like wait it took me about 45 seconds to be like wait a minute this is this took me almost the whole trailer of electric state to be like wait a minute i will tell you when i saw electric state's trailer i was like i'm like this is not real like but i i meant it in like uh oh i want to see this they're playing a trick on me so maybe i was thinking the same thing you were thinking

Yeah, we were coming at it from the same kind of feeling from different angles. I felt like I was on drugs listening to that description. Well, you are not going to sober up when you're actually fired up. Let me put it that way. Speaking of trailers that make you feel like you're on drugs, Snow White, March 21st, live action Disney starring Rachel Zegler. Gal Gadot is the evil queen. Randy, I'm going to do you a favor. Please, please don't watch this trailer.

Because when they cut to the seven dwarfs, the uncanny valley becomes the Marianas Trench. I've seen this trailer. I tried to forget about it. Yeah, you have. You probably, you know what? Your neurological immune system kicked in and you're like, you know what? We're going to put that away. We're going to put that away. I think if, I feel like if Disney had this to do over, they would also. Why are we continuing to do this? I mean, it makes money, but.

Well, they've performed well enough. I think some of these have performed pretty well, even if you haven't. This is anathema to me, and I'm worried about saying this because it's true. My kids, I can't even say the words, prefer the Will Smith Aladdin to the Robin Williams Aladdin.

But, but, but, and the Beauty and the Beast did a billion dollars live action. I don't think Mufasa's done as well. It's coming on a little bit later. But there's money in them, their live action remakes. That's all that's happening. This one, I'm like, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Can we tax write off this one? Have we learned nothing from like, from the Oompa Loompa? It did, I know, I know. That movie made money, Rebecca. I don't know what to tell you.

Yeah. What do you think? I mean, the live action, it feels like the blue might be off the rose. We're going to get a Lilo and Stitch one. All right.

I don't know, Randy, what do you think of this kind of trend? I don't know that I'm with it on these remakes. I really don't. And you know what? I say that as somebody, what's the name of that film? I say that as somebody who really enjoyed Day of the Jackal, which is also an adaptation and has been, you know, is a remake. But I didn't see those originals. So I guess I fall into the same seat as your characters. Yeah.

Right. You like the Will Smith of Aladdin of the Day of the Jackals. Be nice to Randy. We want him to come back. No, I understand it because I like the Pierce Brosnan and Thomas Crown Affair better than the original, but that's just the one that came out when I was... Yeah, but people that like... Is it the Steve McQueen one? The earlier one? Maybe. Well, that's true. Randy will be the last on this podcast to join us here in the 40s. You're keeping us young. The 40 Club, yeah.

Yeah, and the last one we had on our list was the Amateur, so that's April 11th. That brings us to the end. Randy and Rebecca, let's all do, are we all most excited for Mickey 17? I guess now we maybe have perversely intrigued Rebecca with the Electric State, but I don't think it's particularly cool for Mickey 17 being in the war. I'll just

that's going to live in a different zone of experience for me. I think I'm the most excited about the amateur. It's just closer to the genre that I tend to enjoy more. But if Mickey 17 comes out to good reviews, I will see it really quickly. Yeah. All right, Randy, tell us about what you're working on. What are we working on right now? So we have a very exciting partnership that I can't discuss, but when, when, when it comes out, we will talk and, uh,

Yeah. I'm really excited about that. And we released our adaptation list, which was first of its kind in December last month. So that's been really exciting because we were able to talk...

Tell people quickly what that is, what you did with that. We surveyed 60 or so industry members and publishing, so like agents and editors and people from publishing houses. And we asked them, what are the books that you would love to see adapted that have been published in the past 20 years in honor of our 20-year anniversary? Yeah.

And folks responded and it was really exciting to go through that list and see the books that you knew would be there. And then see the books that you're like, ah, where is that? Yeah, there were some fun surprises. Yeah. And, you know, these are industry members. So these are people who might have been a part of that process, might not have been a part of that process, but know, you know, the work that goes into putting a book together. So it was just really exciting to get their take on what should be on a screen.

Yeah. There were 61. We'll put a link in the show notes if you want to go. Some of them are in process, and you didn't necessarily need to know. I mean, I was joyous to see, because it was alphabetical. I've been stumping for Age of Ice by Deepti Kapoor since it came out. I was thrilled to see that. I know Rebecca was thrilled to see all fours on there with the second key. And then

At some point, we're going to get a Sean Cosby and S.A. Cosby adaptation. It's just a matter of time. King of Ashes. I think his next one is King of something, Rebecca. Do you know off the top of your head? King of Ashes was optioned by, I think, by the Obama's production company and Netflix. So that might be the first one we're going to get. And then you just go all the way down from there. I thought it was nuts. I mean, if you were going to do a reading list for your next few years, this is not the worst one. The only thing I would say is that we did not get enough way.

and children's books because you know those get adapted too but all in all i was very excited to see the night circus on there i i do think that's a big budget oh yeah i was thrilled to see that on there that's one of those that we've wondered aloud on the show if we have missed the moment where it can be adapted because like we're kind of past peak streaming yeah

Most of the big adaptable properties, like the top tier names have been snapped up. And I don't know, maybe you know, like if it's been optioned and just is like floating around somewhere or...

I'm sure that almost everything like that gets optioned. It's so magical. How will they pull it off? That talk about High Wire Act. Yeah, because you have to find the right director. You got to find the right cast. And then you have to find somebody who's going to finance it. And all those things have to work at the same exact time. So, yeah. I mean, the good news is it's optioned. Like a lot of these books that we want to see are optioned. It's just that

You've got to find the right crew to take it to the next level. Is there? Yeah, I think the other thing I was wondering about too, not just Kisbook, there's not enough probably straight ahead romance for things that, I mean, a lot of that gets optioned in other ways. Like a lot of those are getting snapped up right as they come out right now. The Emily Henry's, the movie deals are being announced almost before the books are out. Yeah.

Absolutely. Randy, thank you so much for joining us. We'll have to have you back. I mean, I guess for adaptations, the fall season is because a lot of them tend to be... I'm going to lure Randy back to do Book Nerd Movie Hour about Nickel Boys with us. Oh, yes. It's widely available. Yes.

All right. Thanks, everyone. Link in the show notes, bookriot.com slash listen. Shoot us an email, podcast at bookriot.com. If you've got feedback, go check out the blacklist and what Randy and Franklin and the rest of the crew are up to over there. They've got a podcast. They've got a site. You can hook up with them. They've got a podcast, too. And, you know, once Electric State is a Best Picture frontrunner, we will come back and genuflect for Chris Pratt's hairpiece.