Station Eleven Team Reunites For The Glass Hotel And Sea Of Tranquility Adaptations At HBO Max
One of the best shows of 2021 is spawning two more series, although they're not sequels: according to a New Yorker profile, the team behind HBO Max's heart-rending limited series "Station Eleven" are set to adapt two more novels by "Station" author Emily St. John Mandel.
Mandel published the National Book Award finalist on which that series was based in 2014, and has since written two more novels, "The Glass Hotel" and "The Sea of Tranquility." Both will get the HBO Max adaptation treatment, with "Station Eleven" writer and showrunner Patrick Somerville returning to co-write.
The novelist joins the writers' room
The news comes ahead of the author's latest novel's release later this week. "The Sea of Tranquility" is a centuries-spanning metaphysical story about a young Englishman, a renowned intergalactic author, and a detective in a place called Night City. Kirkus reviews call the book "Even more boldly imagined than 'Station Eleven,'" which is saying something given the creativity that brimmed within the post-apocalyptic world of that book.
The other adaptation in the works is for "The Glass Hotel," which isn't set in a future world, but in a present-day one where two siblings end up caught up in a Ponzi scheme. The 2020 book was well-received, and even made former President Barack Obama's annual list of his favorite reads of the year.
Mandel will co-write these two new series herself, a detail that she expanded upon in a tweet after the New Yorker profile went live. After Somerville screen-capped the portion of the profile related to the new projects, Mandel confirmed the project in a quote-tweet, saying:
"It's true, I just spent a month in L.A. working on TV adaptations of The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility with @patrickerville and the rest of the Station Eleven team, and the project makes me so happy." – @EmilyMandel
Somerville brought the same raw humanity to post-apocalyptic drama "Station Eleven" as he did in his time writing for "The Leftovers," a new cult classic sci-fi drama that grapples with tough ideas about loss. The "Station Eleven" writers' room included three former writers from "The Leftovers," and the result was an awe-inspiring, genuinely transformative limited series.
Though Somerville as of now appears to be co-writing the two new series solely with Mandel, plenty of team members from "Station Eleven" are set to return. Deadline reports that "Station Eleven" director Hiro Murai is set to produce, as are David Eisenberg, Jessica Rhoades, Nate Matteson, Scott Delman, and Scott Steindorff.