Neal Stephenson’s epic disaster novel Seveneves is the latest SF tome to get picked up as a series: Deadline reports that Legendary Television has bought the rights, and will adapt the novel as a series executive produced by Allison Friedman (The Mortuary Collection).
Seveneves is sometimes briefly referred to as the book in which the moon blows up. (The first sentence: “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.”) Here’s the publisher’s summary:
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .
Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
Not a single Stephenson novel has been adapted for television or movies yet, though the question “Who could possibly play Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash?” used to be a topic of semi-frequent discussion among fans of that book. (I would like to see the Baroque Cycle adapted, but they would need like 17 seasons, preferably the old 22-episode kind.)
Seveneves was previously in development as a film from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, but as we all know too well by now, things in development often don’t make it past that stage. And the novel—which eventually leaps 5,000 years into humanity’s future—is probably better served by a longer episodic format anyway.
No casting or production timeline has been announced.
