Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are adapting Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory for Netflix, and Wolverine himself is helping out.
The other month, we learned that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were starting up another project under their lucrative Netflix deal: they’re going to adapt Richard Powers’ 2019 novel The Overstory, a conservationist work about nine people whose lives are in some way affected by trees. Netflix describes the adaptation as “a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of the natural world. It tells the story of a world alongside ours that is vast, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. A handful of disparate people learn how to see that world and are drawn into its unfolding catastrophe.”
It’s a pretty heady project, and we still don’t know if Benioff and Weiss are planning a movie or a miniseries or a proper show or what. What we do know is that they have powerful supporters. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is on record as being a big fan of the book, calling it “a wonderful example of how great storytelling can help build understanding and empathy. Original and profound.” And now, The Hollywood Reporter has it that Hugh Jackman — also a fan of the book — is signing on as an executive producer.
So Benioff and Weiss have both their boss at Netflix and Wolverine on their side; you could do worse.
In addition, Game of Thrones executive producer Bernie Caulfield — often credited as the person who made sure that historically massive show ran smoothly — will fill the same role for The Overstory. And Powers himself is on board as a co-executive producer.
The Overstory is just one of several projects Benioff and Weiss have cooking at Netflix. They’re also making The Chair, a university drama starring Sandra Oh; and adapting Liu Cixin’s hugely popular science fiction series The Three-Body Problem, which will likely take up most of their time, both because it’s a huge story and because it’s run into some real-world political tangles:
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