The First Law author Joe Abercrombie has been in the news a lot lately, and for good reason. Last month, Abercrombie released his new book The Devils, kicking off the start of a new series set in an alternate history Europe where a group of monsters embarks on a dangerous mission at the behest of a teenage pope. The book is a raucous good time and has resonated with readers, debuting at #1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list and #5 on the New York Times bestseller list. On top of that, James Cameron has signed a deal with Abercrombie to develop The Devils as a movie; they will co-author the script together.
Suffice to say, Abercrombie is having something of a moment right now. But for all this excitement about The Devils, there's another film project he had in the hopper which sounds like it may not pan out: Best Served Cold, his First Law movie with Deadpool director Tim Miller that was tentatively slated to feature Silo star Rebecca Ferguson as the fearsome mercenary Monza Murcatto.
This film was first announced in May of 2023, but since then news has grown thin. On his recent publicity tour for The Devils, Abercrombie confirmed that development on Best Served Cold has essentially "stalled" for the moment — though he's not ruling out hope that it could "lurch back into life again" at some point in the future.
Joe Abercrombie on Best Served Cold: "Don't hold your breath"
Abercrombie has spoken about Best Served Cold several times over the past few months. He did an interview with the YouTube channel Matt's Fantasy Book Reviews where he said that momentum on Best Served Cold has "petered out" for the time being, though it's not completely "dead."
"I've been around that block a few times...the block of film and TV stuff, so I'm pretty sanguine these days," Abercrombie said about the adaptation. "I don't tend to get too carried away with things because they often just, you know, will get to a certain point, not go further, fall apart in one way or another."
"So the Best Served Cold thing got quite a long way actually, got very close to being made in many ways, but has kind of petered out. Isn't necessarily dead, I mean that's the other thing, these things never quite die, they kind of, you know, morph into a slightly different form, get picked up elsewhere. And because the industry is so constantly shifting and changing, and the people at the various different streamers are always changing and they get new mandates and new ideas [about] what they're after...and so something will be dropped in one place and maybe picked up in another at a later time. So definitely not dead and there's other irons in the fire, but yeah, I mean, don't hold your breath. My advice with any of these things, don't hold your breath."Joe Abercrombie on Best Served Cold
Best Served Cold is in a "period of not moving forward"
A few week's later on another booktube channel, Mike's Book Reviews, Abercrombie talked a bit more about the Best Served Cold movie, saying that while things were moving along, it was "not greenlit," meaning the studio hadn't given the full go-ahead to make the movie. Best Served Cold didn't get there, despite some solid initial buzz and the attachment of Rebecca Ferguson.
So what happened? The channel's host asked if the movie's diminishing chances had anything to do with the Hollywood writer's strike of 2023, which began during the same month that the Best Served Cold movie was initially announced to the press.
"Not so much the writer's strike, I wouldn't say," Abercrombie replied. "I mean...writer's strikes are unhelpful, often because they kind of give the studios a change to think again...you never wanna give people a minute. It's all momentum, right? Momentum and excitement. So when something's rolling and going forward, 'Oh, we've got a new version of the script and we love it. Oh, we'll start casting. Oh, we've got this person,'...it starts to take on this momentum and this excitement and everyone wants to be a part of it. Anything that stops that forward motion is bad, and can give people a chance to change their minds and say 'No' and so on."
Abercrombie said that Best Served Cold is "basically in a period of not moving forward." When Mike joked about it being caught in development hell, Abercrombie displayed that sanguine attitude he mentioned during the earlier interview, saying, "All development is hell, up to a point. And sometimes it's moving nicely and sometimes it's stalled, and currently it's stalled. But nothing ever really dies, so it might lurch into life again at some point, who knows. I've got some other stuff going on too, so I'm focused elsewhere for the time being."
Now know that some of the "other stuff" Abercrombie was referring to is his adaptation of The Devils with James Cameron. Mike actually asked Abercrombie directly if The Devils had any film interest, and Abercrombie coyly said, "I could not possibly comment, no comment...I can neither confirm nor deny that I confirm nor deny, even that is up in the air." Sneaky, Joe Abercrombie.
Netflix almost developed a First Law television show
Another interesting piece of this puzzle is that once upon a time, Netflix almost made a First Law television show. During a conversation with George R.R. Martin during his book tour for The Devils, Abercrombie said that he and Tim Miller had been working together for about 12 years to bring The First Law to the screen in some way or other. Best Served Cold is their most recent attempt, but there have been others: namely, they shopped it to Netflix back in the streamer's early days.
"The problem partly was, you know, the first meeting I had at Netflix, we drove to this backstreet in like suburban Los Angeles, little office building...[Netflix's office] was like three rooms," Abercrombie recalled. "They said 'Go away and write some scripts.' We went away, we wrote some scripts, came back a year later...giant tower block with Netflix on the top. Hundreds of thousands of people working there. Loads of new layers of executives, totally different culture. And that's been my experience often...everything's constantly changing and shifting. You sell something to one person, you come back, they're not in the building anymore. 'Oh, that guy? Yeah, he got fired months ago.' You know, there's new people with a different mandate. It falls apart...and then you hear from some other place, 'Oh, that guy who got fired, he's here now. He's looking for stuff. He really liked your project, why don't we go over there? We'll reimagine it, we'll rethink it, we'll redo it for a different, slightly different market.' And then of course, the market's moved on. Film was big...now TV is big though, so let's reimagine it for TV. So it's always difficult. It's like a moving target the whole time."
The original First Law novel, The Blade Itself, came out in 2006, a few years after Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. It's very easy to imagine a world where Abercrombie's books might have been shuffled from movie development to TV and back again, especially now that streamers are tightening their belts and starting to get more tepid about big expensive fantasy series. It makes sense that this latest iteration of Best Served Cold was developed as movie, rather than a show. But alas, for now it sounds like Best Served Cold will remain on ice.
On the bright side, with James Cameron behind it, there's a higher than average chance that we may actually get to see The Devils brought to the big screen. And since that book is the first in a new series without tons of secondary world fantasy lore and history, it should be a much less intimidating prospect than The First Law for studios. I'll hold out hope, even if I'm going to take Abercrombie's advice and not hold my breath for Best Served Cold on screen.
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