With an adaptation comes a little fear that it will never live up to the book, but in this case, the series exceeded all expectations.

With an adaptation comes a little fear that it will never live up to the book, but in this case, the series exceeded all expectations.
All your favorite books are being made into shows! Here are nine highly anticipated TV adaptations of favorite books set to premiere in 2020.
The Outsider, based on the novel by Stephen King, premiered on HBO on January 12, 2020 and will conclude on March 8. You can catch up on HBO’s digital platform and watch live on Sundays at 9/8c. The Outsider follows the investigation of the gruesome murder of a young boy and the deceiving evidence that leaves a small town questioning everything they know.
Locke and Key is loosely based on the comic book series by Joe Hill and premiered on Netflix on February 7, 2020. It will run as a ten-part series. Locke and Key tells the story of three siblings who move to their ancestral home after the murder of their father. There, they discover magical keys which are also being sought out by a demon.
The Good Lord Bird based on the 2013 novel by James McBride is set to premiere on Showtime on February 16, 2020 at 9/8c. Ethan Hawke will both executive produce and star in the limited series which chronicles the journey of abolitionist John Brown, told from the perspective of a fictional enslaved boy named Onion. Onion helps Brown during the Bleeding Kansas uprisings.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng will be adapted into a limited series for Hulu with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington executive producing and starring in the series. It will premiere March 18, 2020 and is one of the most anticipated series of this year. It follows two mothers who are brought together through their children’s friendship, which eventually unearths dark secrets.
Bridgerton, another highly anticipated series, is based on the series of historical romance novels by Julia Quinn. The series will be produced by Shonda Rhimes and is set to debut on Netflix later this year. This series is set in the 1800s and follows each of the eight Bridgerton children.
I Know This Much is True will be a limited series on HBO, set to debut later this year. Mark Ruffalo will executive produce and star in the series based on the novel by Wally Lamb. The series will follow identical twin brothers, one of whom suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. It is a story of betrayal, sacrifice, and forgiveness as the brothers struggle with their relationship with one another.
Invincible is an upcoming animated series set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video in 2020. It is based on the comic created by Robert Kirkman, which follows teenager Mark Grayson, whose father happens to be the most powerful superhero on the planet. However, after his seventeenth birthday, Mark begins developing powers of his own. The series will follow teenage superhero Mark, as he navigates his new powers under his father’s tutelage.
Nine Perfect Strangers will reunite Nicole Kidman and producers of the hit series, Big Little Lies to premiere on Hulu in late 2020. Kidman will also star in the series which is based on the novel Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, who is responsible for writing the best-selling novel Big Little Lies. The series will follow nine strangers as they gather at a boutique wellness resort with the common goal of resetting and reinvigorating their lives. However, things take a turn, and these strangers have no idea just how challenging this retreat will be.
Normal People will premiere on Hulu as a twelve-part series in the later half of 2020. The series is based on the popular novel by the same name, written by Sally Rooney. This series will follow main characters Marianne and Connell as they navigate an unlikely on-again, off-again relationship throughout their teenage and young adult lives.
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Dawson’s Creek‘s Joshua Jackson has been cast in a leading role in Hulu’s adaptation of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. Published 2017, written by Celeste Ng’s second novel is about two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights who are brought together through their children. Shaker Heights is Ng’s hometown and she described writing about her hometown as “a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them, you love them dearly, and yet you also know all of their quirks and their foibles.
The Kenyon Review wrote that the novel “shows a particular place and time that makes us reflect on the limits of our own views and consider the spiderwebs of connection, conflict, privilege, and exclusion that we, too, create,” and, despite not liking the novel overall, The Guardian still described it as “well crafted”, saying that “[t]he characters are vividly drawn. The author manages a large cast, multiple points of view, and all three rings of her circus with grace and authority”.
The book was voted as the winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards for fiction in 2017. The Hollywood Reporter wrote about the long history with the adaptation, despite the book barely even being two years old. Before the book was even published, “[Reese] Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, snatched up the rights…and brought it to fellow star and exec. producer Kerry Washington”.
Reese Witherspoon, June Carter-Cash in Walk The Line and Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, and Kerry Washington, who portrayed Broomhilda von Shaft in Django Unchained and Olivia Pope in Scandal, then went to Liz Tigelaar, who agreed to adapted the novel and serve as series showrunner.
Soon afterwards, ABC Signature agreed to executive produce “the series alongside Hello Sunshine and Simpson Street” and Tigelaar, Lauren Neustadter, Pilar Savone, producer of Django Unchained and associate producer for Inglourious Basterds, and Lynn Shelton, director of We Go Way Back and Humpday, all came on board as executive producers.
Streaming platform Hulu ended up winning a bidding war for the whole package.
Now joining this all star team is Joshua Jackson, perhaps best known as Pacey in Dawson’s Creek, who is set to portray Bill Richardon.
As of today, the cast list is as follows:
Joshua Jackson will play Bill Richardson, an attorney and husband to Elena.
Elena an engetic and strong willed 3rd generation resident of Shaker Heights who writes for the local paper, will be portrayed by Reese Witherspoon.
Jade Pettyjohn, who played Shelby in Destroyer, will play Lexie Richardson, the oldest Richardson child and a senior in high school. Jordan Elsass, who played Kyle in People with Issues, will be Trip Richardson, the second oldest Richardson child who is a jock.
Gavin Lewis will be Moody Richardson, a well-meaning child who introduces Pearl to his family and develops a crush on her.
Megan Stott will be Izzy Richardson, a black sheep of the family who rejects the Richardsons upper-middle class lifestyle.
Kerry Washington will be Mia Warren, a photographer and single mother. Lexi Underwood will be Pearl Warren, a kind child who doesn’t know who her father is and is the same age as Moody.
Rosemarie DeWitt, who played Laura Wilder in La La Land, will be Linda McCullough, a childhood friend of Elena’s, whose adoption of a Chinese baby causes controversy in the close-knit community.
No word yet on who has been cast as Bebe Chow, Mia’s co-worker who wants her abandoned baby back from the McCulloughs and ends up in a custody battle with them, or who has been cast as Mirabelle McCullough/May Ling Chow, the daughter at the heart of the custody battle, but we’ll keep you updated!
Featured Image Via Amazon, Bustle and Vox
The Little Fires Everywhere adaptation is shaping up nicely! The novel is a 2017 release by Celeste Ng and takes place in fictional suburb Shaker Heights, a sleepy neighborhood where everyone plays by the rules and nothing really exciting happens—especially not to Elena Richardson, a more affluent resident. That is, nothing really exciting happens until artist and single mother called Mia Warren bursts into the community with her teenage daughter and rents a house from the Richardsons. She disregards the rules of the community entirely, and drama soon explodes between the two families as the Richardsons clash with the Warrens. It’s a drama full of secrets and fascinating thematic representations of motherhood, masterfully explored through different angles of life.
According to Variety, the series has been picked up by Hulu as a limited miniseries. The adaptation will be directed by Lynn Shelton, who is also set to executive produce the show. The cast includes superstars Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, and Rosemarie DeWitt. Also in the cast are Jade Pettyjohn, Jordan Elsass, Gavin Lewis, Megan Stott, and Lexi Underwood. Shelton will direct the premiere and finale of the show, along with two additional episodes. According to the official synopsis, the series “follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. The story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.”
The series is highly anticipated and will be 8 episodes long, according to TVSeriesFinale. Reese Witherspoon will star as Elena while Mia Warren will be played by Kerry Washington. Jade Pettyjohn will play Lexie Richardson, Jordan Elsass will star as Trip Richardson, Gavin Lewis as Moody Richardson, Megan Stott as Izzy Richardson, and Lexi Underwood as Pearl Warren.
It remains unknown when the series will be debut, but it appears to be well underway! We can’t wait to see the series come to life; it sounds like a guaranteed binge-watch! Are you excited to see Little Fires Everywhere come to life? We certainly are! Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
Featured Image Via Deadline.
Image Via dailymail.co.uk
Celeste Ng, whether you have heard the name or not, is one of the most powerful writers of our time. Her books have weaved themselves seamlessly into the lives of more than two and a quarter million people. It is a staggering number of souls that many authors strive to infiltrate. Her debut novel Everything You Never Told Me will soon hit the big screen and will star the gifted Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, her other novel Little Fires Everywhere is being developed for television by Hello Sunshine, which is a production company founded by Reese Witherspoon.
In her books, she illustrates the struggles that many face in the United States, predominantly in relation to race. Everything I Never Told You tells the story of the daughter of an interracial couple. It takes place in the 70s, which means it had only just become legal to marry someone who was not your race in the United States. This book is a beautifully written demonstration of what it is like to come from an immigrant family and how race effects not only life outside your family, but within it. It provides a glimpse into a family dynamic that is delicate and full of history. Little Fires Everywhere follows a family who wants to adopt a Chinese-American baby abandoned by her mother and how this situations divides their suburban Ohio town. It highlights a powerful points about class, race and family and became one of last year’s most popular books. Ng explores characters so fluidly that we as readers start to explore the characters ourselves. Ng’s writing transcends these pieces into works of art that penetrates the hearts of readers.
Image Via Penguin Random House
Ng uses not just her books, but her platform, for literary activism. In just the past month, she joined a bunch of other writers who are calling for the right to give their characters rights in their future novels; this is to raise money for immigrant families who wish to reunite with their families. Her twitter has a following of 95,000 followers and instead of using this platform for just herself, she uses it as a platform for voices, she believes, deserve to be heard.
Image Via Celeste Ng Twitter
Being a daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, Ng said in an interview with the New York Times that she “doesn’t want to be the single story of the young, Asian-American woman writer” and that she wants people to know that “there are lots of other Asian women, even Chinese-American women, who are doing all kinds of stuff that I’m doing.” Celeste will continue to use her stance to help those be heard who deserve to be heard and encouraging us writers to continue with our voices.
Featured Image Via Bostonglobe.com