Lindy Ryan’s debut novel Bless Your Heart has been picked up for television adaptation. According to Deadline, Emily Whitesell, whose previous credits include writing episodes for the Freeform mermaid show Siren, will write and showrun the project. Boilermaker Entertainment and Rain Productions are producing.
Bless Your Heart came out this April. It’s the first in a series and centers on the Evans women, who run a local funeral home in 1999 Southwest Texas. One day, the dead and buried start coming back to life, and the Evanses know that the Strigoi—the OG vampire—is back.
“We are thrilled to partner with Emily who is the perfect writer to adapt Lindy’s incredible novel as she is exceptional at balancing serialized story telling with indelible characters,” Louis Milito, principal at Boilermaker, said in a statement via Deadline. “Having a strong female creator to bring the Evans women to the screen was a priority for us in honoring Ryan’s novel.”
“The beauty of well-formed horror, for me, is its nod to the fear and horror we all confront as human beings, along with our own shortcomings,” added Whitesell. “Lindy’s book not only created a new genre of horror but her characters embodied that deep well of emotional resonance.”
The project is still in its early days, so no news yet on if/when the show will go into production or make its way to a screen near you.
