Adding to the wave of crime series on cable, such as True Detective, comes Quarry, Cinemax‘s dark and moody adaptation of Max Allan Collins’s noir 1970s era series about a hit man. The eight-episode run will premiere on September 9th and star Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) as a Marine who comes home to Memphis after the Vietnam War and gets caught in a world of violence and corruption.

Also scheduled for release is a tie-in, Quarry – TV Tie-In Edition, Max Allan Collins (RH/Hard Case Crime, Sept. 27; OverDrive Sample).

Publisher Hard Case Crime has recently re-issued the original Quarry novels with their signature retro covers. According to GraphicNovelReporter, the publisher revived the series in 2006 (after a 20-year gap) and Collins has written seven new titles thus far. The latest is Quarry in the Black (RH/Hard Case Crime; October 4, 2016).

Collins’s graphic novel Road to Perdition was adapted as the critically acclaimed 2002 film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.

The Free State of Jones leads the book-to-screen lineup this week with the Matthew McConaughey vehicle, set during the American Civil War, opening in wide release beginning June 23.

The movie recounts the true-life events of a Mississippi farmer who lead a band of rebels against the Confederate army. It is a rarity, an adaptation of a university press book, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War, Victoria E. Bynum (U. of N. Carolina Press), with a tie-in featuring a new afterward by Bynum.

Also on June 23, Queen of the South starts its run on the USA Network, adapting Arturo Perez-Reverte’s story of female drug lords. The novel on which it is based, Queen of the South (PRH/Plume; OverDrive Sample), first published in 2005, now features new cover art advertising the show.

The novel has been adapted previously, as La Reina del Sur, which aired in 2011 on Telemundo (the American Spanish-language network owned by NBCUniversal).

The series is #4 on People magazine’s picks for the week, calling it a “satisfyingly pulpy melodrama.”

On June 24 The Fundamentals of Caring comes to Netflix. Staring Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts, and Selena Gomez, the film is based on The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison (Workman/Algonquin Books; OverDrive Sample). No new tie-in is available for the road-trip story of a teen with muscular dystrophy and his down-on-his-luck care giver, but the 2013 paperback now has cover art promoting the movie.

The film got nods at Sundance but as Variety reports, the market for indie self-actualization films has fallen: “Indie-comedy cliches get a crowdpleasing workout … but the theatrical market isn’t what it used to be … Already acquired by Netflix for SVOD [streaming video on demand] in a pricey pre-fest pick-up, that venue sounds like the best bet to connect with audiences.”

The fourth in the Hallmark Murder She Baked series based on JoAnne Fluke’s novels, this one titled A Deadly Recipe, premieres this Sunday.

Series star Alison Sweeney appeared on the Ellen Show yesterday to talk about the movies, working with a difficult co-star, and her own novel, Opportunity Knocks (Hachette Books. 4/5/16).

Preview the Hallmark movie here.

Tie-in:

Fudge Cupcake Murder
Joanne Fluke
Kensington: May 31, 2016
9781496711526, 1496711521
Mass Market
$7.99 USD, $8.99 CAD

“Up-and-coming” actor Bill Skarsgard will play the lead in the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel It reports Deadline Hollywood, adding, “It’s a step up for Skarsgard, who has been knocking on the door in series like Hemlock Grove and the Divergent sequels.”

Andy Muschietti (Mama) is directing the New Line Cinema production (after Jane Eyre‘s Cary Fukunaga left the project). Mash-up master Seth Grahame-Smith is one of the producers.

Consequence of Sound reports the movie will be a two-part set with the first following “the children being stalked by the titular shapeshifting monster, while the second will pick up decades later, when those same kids are confronting their same demons as adults.”

It is one of King’s highest regarded novels, ranked as #1 on Den of Geek‘s gathering of King’s “Top 10 Pure Horror Novels” saying “IT is King’s terrifying, gruesome, trashy, cosmic, demonic horror masterpiece that we still can’t claw out of our minds so many years later.” The novel also beat out all but The Stand and The Shining on BuzzFeed‘s list of King’s “11 Essential” books. In a Rolling Stones reader poll the crazy clown novel ranked the 2nd most popular of any King novel.

Fans may recall that this is not the first It adaptation. In 1990 a TV miniseries starring Tim Curry aired on ABC.

Attention on the STARZ adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is growing. As we reported earlier, the project has seen bumps in the road but now appears firmly on track, with an impressive cast and a hot showrunner.

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, promoting his new nonfiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction (HC/William Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), Gaiman talks about the process of the novel’s adaption, addressing his feelings of ownership and the struggle to let them go:

“My fundamental attitude is that you’re always trying to guard the soul and the heart of whatever it is, but at the same time you have to allow people to create, and you have to allow people to have fun and build and make it their own. To me it’s kind of a peculiar tightrope, and you don’t want to fall off on one side or the other … At least in script stage, I am very not shy about telling [series creator] Bryan Fuller, ‘I love this, I love this, I love this, and that thing you had, that’s over my dead body and you have to change it.’ ”

He also reports that despite his conflicted feelings the show is already on its own path, “they’re 10 days into shooting, and the only thing I am absolutely sure of is that this American Gods is its own thing … If it succeeds or if it fails, it’ll be on its own terms. I know I’ve never seen anything that looked like it.”

Last year Fuller gave an interview to Crave about American Gods, saying:

“potentially what we’re looking at with American Gods is developing a Marvel Universe, not with superheroes but with gods. As detailed and integrated as the Marvel Universe is, and doing that with deities is something that excited all of us … we may have spin-offs of American Gods that follow lesser gods in greater detail than you might in the main series, but there’s all sorts of potential for this show that we’re very excited about”

Den of Geek‘s take on that is: “In other words, this won’t just be a straight adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, and is instead being looked at very much as long form television.”

The site also has a rundown of the casting thus far, calling the recent news that Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) will play Media, “infinitely awesome.”

She joins Ian McShane (Deadwood) playing Mr. Wednesday and Ricky Whittle (The 100), as Shadow Moon.

The show is set to air in a 10-episode first season early in 2017.

Gaiman fans will have a chance to see and hear even more about the author when the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously airs on the video platform and streaming service Vimeo, starting on July 8th.

Deadline Hollywood reports, “Gaiman’s story is told in his own worlds as well as through interviews with close friends/collaborators Terry Pratchett, Bill Hader, Michael Sheen, Lenny Henry, Wil Wheaton, Stoya, JH Williams III, Lev Grossman, … as well as his chats with George RR Martin, Jonathan Ross, John Barrowman, Grant Morrison and Phillip Pullman.”

The summer is off to a dismal start for Hollywood. The movie trades are characterizing the holiday weekend box office as “lackluster,” with X-Men: Apocalypse coming in below expectations and Disney’s Alice Through The Looking Glass considered a flat-out “bomb.” Among the bright spots for adaptations, the much smaller release, Whit Stillman’s Jane Austen-inspired Love & Friendship is continuing to do well after opening earlier this month and is considered an “arthouse crossover” success.

Beginning tonight, May 30 Roots airs on the History Chanel, simulcast on A&E and Lifetime, over four consecutive nights.

The new version seeks to make the seminal TV event, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alex Haley, relevant to a new generation of viewers (the NYT review is headlined, “Roots for a Black Lives Matter Era“).

The 70’s version was a sensation, opening the eyes of many white Americans to the horrors of slavery and encouraging African Americans to research their family histories, but executive producer Mark Wolper, the son of the original’s EP David L Wolper, told Deadline he realized he had to re-imagine his father’s efforts when his own son refused to watch the 1977 series, saying, “like your music, it doesn’t speak to me.”

The series remake stars Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

A tie-in edition come out on May 3: Roots [miniseries tie-in]: The Saga of an American Family, Alex Haley, (Perseus/Da Capo Press).

Me Before You opens on June 3. The anticipation is so fevered, as we noted, that just the two trailer releases caused bumps in sales for the book it is based on. The novel’s author, JoJo Moyes, wrote the screenplay and the movie stars Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games) transitioning from worlds of dragons and death matches to life-affirming contemporary romance.

A movie-tie in edition came out on April 26: Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In) by Jojo Moyes (PRH/Penguin Books).

Outcast premieres on Cinemax in a 10 episode run starting June 3. It is based the comic Robert Kirkman writes and Paul Azaceta illustrates and stars Patrick Fugit (Gone Girl) and Philip Glenister (Life on Mars) as two characters caught in a web of demonic possession. Wired calls it “a bloody, brutal ride” and reports it has already been renewed for a second season.

Two collected editions of the comic are currently in print with a third to follow on June 15.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows also opens on June 3. The blast from the past stars Megan Fox, Stephen Amell, and Will Arnett and is a follow-up to the 2014 film.

This time the turtles wonder if they can become human while they fight new mutants created by their arch enemy.

The leveled reader tie-in, Shell Shock (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows), illustrated by Paolo Villanelli (PRH/Random House Books for Young Readers), is now available, but the novelization doesn’t arrive until  June 7: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows Deluxe Novelization (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows), David Lewman (PRH/Random House Books for Young Readers; also in paperback). Is it possible that, like the Star Wars novelization, it was held back for fear of spoilers?

Warner Bros.may have to release fewer films as a consequence of Batman v. Superman‘s disappointing box office, but Disney is on a roll. The Jungle Book dominated ticket sales for weeks before ceding the top spot to Captain America: Civil War, which Disney has a hand in as well. Coming next week is Alice Through the Looking Glass, a third Disney effort, also with book connections.

Familiar faces from the earlier Alice film return, including Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Tim Burton produces the film but does not direct this time, leaving that to James Bobin, known for his work on the recent Muppets movies. The film opens May 27.

Tie-ins came out in April: a novelization of the film, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Kari Sutherland (Hachette/Disney Press); a “choose-your-own-path” story, Alice Through the Looking Glass: A Matter of Time, Carla Jablonski with illustrations by Olga Mosqueda, Vivien Wu, Richard Tuzon, and Jeff Thomas (Hachette/Disney Press); and the re-issue of the novelization of the earlier film, Alice in Wonderland (Based on the motion picture directed by Tim Burton) (Hachette/Disney Press).

AMC hopes to continue the success they had with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book series with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s adaptation of Garth Ennis’s Preacher (DC Comics, Vertigo)  The  10-episode series, begins this Sunday. No tie-in has been announced.

Season 2 of Fox’s Wayward Pines begins on May 25. Produced by M. Night Shyamalan, the mystery/science fiction series is based on the Blake Crouch novels (Pines, Wayward, and The Last Town).

Matt Dillon stars as Ethan Burke, a U.S. Secret Service agent trapped in a small town while also searching for two fellow agents who have disappeared in the same area.

Previously released tie-ins of the first and last book in the series are available: Pines, Blake Crouch (Thomas & Mercer; May 5, 2015) and The Last Town, Blake Crouch (Brilliance/Thomas & Mercer; July 15, 2014).

Heavily promoted at BEA last week was Crouch;s forthcoming thriller, Dark Matter, (PRH/Crown, 7/26), also a GalleyChatter pick.

Speculation is swirling over who will be the next 007, but we now know who will run the spy game on this side of the Atlantic.

John Krasinski is the next Jack Ryan.

The Office favorite will star as the famous fictional CIA agent, following in the footsteps of the film stars Chris Pine, Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford, and Alec Baldwin.

This time, however, Ryan is not headed to the big screen, but to an Amazon TV series.

While details are sketchy and no air date is known, Deadline Hollywood is reporting that “expectations are for the show to go straight-to-series” (translated: bypassing Amazon’s “try it out” pilot stage). It will not be a direct adaptation but “a new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative using the novels as source material.”

Jack Ryan first appeared in 1984 in The Hunt for Red October (PRH/Berkley, 2013 is the most recent edition), which was also the first film adaptation (starring Baldwin).

Clancy went on to write a series of novels focused on Ryan’s rise from agent to the President of the United States before beginning a new series featuring his son, starting with The Teeth of the Tiger (PRH/Berkley, 2004).

Filming has ceased indefinitely on the third Maze Runner movie, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, based on James Dashner’s #1 NYT bestselling YA series of the same name.

The film had been scheduled for release on 2/17/17 but Deadline Hollywood is reporting that star Dylan O’Brien, who was injured on set in late March, is suffering injuries “far more serious than initially reported.” No word is forthcoming on when filming will resume and the cast and crew have been sent home.

Both the first and second films, The Maze Runner and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, were commercial successes, taking the #1 spot at the box office during their opening weekends.

There are four books currently in the series with a fifth due on Sept. 27, 2016, The Fever Code (Maze Runner, Book Five; Prequel), James Dashner (PRH/Delacorte). As the subtitle says, this one is actually a prequel, which, according to the publisher, will reveal “the story of how Thomas and WICKED built the Maze.”

A trade paperback edition of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, with a sticker announcing “Soon to Be A Major Motion Picture,” was released in 2013 (PRH/Delacorte).

A new deal between Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way and Paramount Pictures brings renewed attention to the long-simmering film adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (RH/Crown, 2003). Deadline reports that the movie, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring the actor could be “DiCaprio’s next major project.”

As we observed last August, the adaptation has had a long gestation period. Tom Cruise acquired the rights, planning to star, in 2003 but nothing came of it and DiCaprio bought the rights in 2010. It was not until screenwriter Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips) figured out a way to tell the book’s dual story that power players got behind the adaptation once again.

DiCaprio clearly likes book adaptations. His production company is currently at work on Live By Night, based on the Dennis Lehane novel and directed by Ben Affleck.

He has two other book adaptations in mind as well, Variety reports. One is based on the forthcoming YA post-apocalyptic novel Sandcastle Empire by debut author Kayla Olson, to be published by HarperTeen in the summer of 2017, according to the author’s website. Also in development is another long simmering project, a limited television series adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Charles Lindbergh.

A caution, however, as The Guardian reports, “Appian Way is a serial purchaser of rights to promising Hollywood projects, not all of which see the light of day.”

To mark the second season of the Outlander TV show, Diana Gabaldon has released another Outlander novella (or short story, depending on your viewpoint), Virgins: An Outlander Novella (PRH/Dell, ISBN 9781101882528; Recorded Books), which arrives on the new USA Today best seller list at #10.

Previously published in the anthology Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (Macmillan/Tor/Forge, December 2013; ISBN: 9780765332066), it is excerpted on Gabaldon’s website.

The story predates the events of Outlander and begins just after Jamie is flogged by Randall and escapes to France, where he joins a band of mercenaries that includes his great friend Ian Murray.

When the print collection was published, also featuring a Martin story from the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire, it earned a starred review from PW and the LA Times called it “a splendid cross-genre anthology” and is in many library collections.

Regardless of format, the strong debut on the USA Today best-seller list is another indicator of how well the STARZ series is doing and its ability to bring new readers to the books.

The Jungle Book continues to earn stellar reviews and is set to open to acclaim this week. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz sums up the general take:

“I saw the newest Disney version of The Jungle Book in the company of my enthralled 12-year old son, and there were moments when I envied him—but not too many, because the film is so surefooted in its effects, so precise and simple in its characterizations, and so clear about what it’s trying to say about the relationship between humanity and nature, that it made me feel about his age again, too. Maybe younger.”

Entertainment Weekly, Deadline, and USA TODAY all follow suit with The A.V. Club offering a rare dissent.

Today we focus on 3 movies of the adaptations arriving next week with tie-ins and big prospects (there are more, see our Upcoming Books to Movies and TV spreadsheet).

The Night Manager debuts on AMC (imported from the BBC) in a six-part miniseries that had already enjoyed gushing praise, so much so that fans are asking for a second season.

Promoting the the US release, stars Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie both say there will only be the one season.

The TV show is based on The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) by John le Carré (PRH/Ballantine Books) in which a former British solider goes undercover to investigate an arms dealer.

The series begins in the US on April 19. One indicator of its success is that, after its release in the UK, tourist business increased to Mallorca, a major setting of the show.

Hologram for the King have sneaked up on many with even the tie-in edition coming out just a week ahead of the film’s opening.

If you aren’t aware of it, you’re not out of the loop. There hasn’t been a great deal of press coverage yet, even though the trailer got attention and Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of “20 of 2016’s Most Anticipated Book-to-Movie Adaptations.”

The film is directed by Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas) and stars Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury. Based on Dave Eggers’s 2012 novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, it tells the story of a washed-out American salesman trying to change his fortunes with a deal out of Saudi Arabia.

The season six premiere of Game of Thrones airs on April 24th, finally putting an end to months of speculation over what is going to happen now that the TV series jumps ahead of  George R.R. Martin’s novels. As a result, there is no tie-in for this season, with Martin writing that the next book will “be done when it’s done.”

A new trailer was released this week, prompting the fan site Den of Geek to analyze the many promos to date.

The upcoming new adaptation of Roots debuted during the MipTV conference in Cannes yesterday, television’s version of the more famous Cannes film festival, where producers make deals, show off their latest projects, and troll for international distribution.

Roots is already set for U.S. release, scheduled to air on the History Chanel, and simulcast on A&E and Lifetime, over four consecutive nights beginning May 30.

The premiere was highly successful and emotional, according to Deadline, with stars from the 1977 original mixing with the new series’ actors in a panel discussion on the meaning of both adaptations.

The new version seeks to make the seminal TV event, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alex Haley, relevant to a new generation of viewers, many of whom were not alive when the first adaptation aired.

The 70’s version was a sensation, opening the eyes of many white American to the horrors of slavery and encouraging African Americans to research their family histories, but executive producer Mark Wolper, the son of the original’s EP David L Wolper, realized he had to re-imagine his father’s efforts when his own son refused to watch the 1977 series, saying, “like your music, it doesn’t speak to me.”

The series remake stars Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

A tie-in edition comes out on May 3: Roots [miniseries tie-in]: The Saga of an American Family, Alex Haley, (Perseus/Da Capo Press).

A biography of the author was published late last year, Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Morrell, picked by Essence magazine last month as one of “6 Must-Read Books for Black History Month.”

HBO has bought the rights to the TV adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects (PRH/ Shaye Areheart, 2006), starring Amy Adams. Deadline characterizes the deal as part of a “very competitive situation” (i.e., many others were bidding on it, indicating it’s a hot property).

The show runner is Marti Noxon (Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) with Flynn writing many of the episodes. Jean-Marc Vallée will direct all the episodes. He has experience adapting books in this genre. He also directs HBO’s Big Little Lies, based on the book by Liane Moriarty, set to debut some time next year starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.

This is the third of the Flynn’s novels to be adapted, following Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris and Dark Places, starring Charlize Theron. Earlier this year, it was announced that Flynn’s short story, “The Grownup,” was sold to Universal. Originally published as “What Do You Do?” in Rogues, an anthology edited by George R. R. Martin, it was subsequently released in hardcover as The Grownup (PRH/Crown. Nov. 2015).

The adaptation news for the week is centered on the second season of Outlander, which is based on book 2 of Diana Gabaldon’s beloved and long running series, Dragonfly In Amber (PRH/Delacorte, 1992; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample).

After waiting almost a year for the return of the show, and after leaving fans divided on how well or horribly season one concluded, all eyes now focus on the politics of warfare as Jamie and Claire travel to Paris in an attempt to stop the coming Jacobite rebellion.

Based on early coverage from EOnline!, the show is set to be a lavish, visual treat with even more gorgeous costumes and sets as the time-crossed lovers enter the Royal Court of France and host their own high-powered dinner parties. The site also reports that the massive and complex plot will be told in 13 continuous episodes rather than the divided 16 of season one (no midseason Droughtlander!).

A new tie-in edition celebrates the show’s long awaited return, complete with a cover shot that would be at home in Game of Thrones if it were set in the 18th century: Dragonfly in Amber (Starz Tie-in Edition), Diana Gabaldon (PRH/Bantam; also in mass market).

There are few reviews yet for the second season, which starts on April 9th but the show is already a proven winner. According to Entertainment Weekly, which pushed the series 2 opener in a cover story a few weeks ago, Outlander has made Starz the second-most popular premium network behind HBO and has also helped sell 5 million more copies of Diana Gabaldon’s books, raising the total to 27 million worldwide.

The reviews that do exist, such as one from TVLine which gives it a B+, explain that “Starz has put a pretty strict gag order on discussion of certain aspects of the upcoming season.”

Below is the official trailer followed by highlights of the new setting of season two.