From the Washington Post’s latest “Book Club” email.
 Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, Calif. (Ron Charles/The Washington Post); W. W. Norton |
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss brought to life some towering creatures when they adapted “Game of Thrones” for HBO, but now they’re tackling some real giants. Their new project is adapting Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Overstory,” about the fundamental role that trees play on planet Earth (review). Deadline reports that Hugh Jackman has signed on as an executive producer for the planned Netflix series.
With Powers’s signature ability to make cerebral material terrifically engaging, “The Overstory” is a landmark novel in the field of environmental fiction and one of The Post’s top 10 books of 2018 (full list).
Powers has written a dozen celebrated novels, but this will be his first TV adaptation. “I’m thrilled that it’s happening,” he tells me, “and especially pleased that it’s with Weiss, Benioff and Jackman. An eight-part series seems the right amount of narrative ‘real estate’ for a long book that covers a lot of territory, and these folks are used to working in the imaginative and visually innovative modes that will be needed to convey The Overstory’s preoccupations with myth, legend and ‘deep time.’ They’re also great with psychology and character development, so I feel I’m in very good hands!”
