Film Rights Snagged For Post-Apocalyptic Novel The Dog Stars
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We featured Peter Heller’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Dog Stars, in our regular “This Week in Science Fiction” column back in August, but now the book is already on the way to becoming a movie. The book earned plenty of critical praise at the time, landing on bestseller lists for both the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and organizations such as Amazon, Publishers Weekly, and Barnes & Noble have named it one of the best of the year.
THR reports that Constantin Film has acquired the movie rights to The Dog Stars. If you don’t recognize the name, they’re the production company behind the Resident Evil movies and the cannibal-hillbilly Wrong Turn franchise. If that fact doesn’t inspire great confidence in you, well, you’re not alone, brother. He said to his apparently male hypothetical reader.
If nothing else, it sounds like Constantin will have some solid source material to screw up horribly. Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is set in the aftermath of a flu-like pandemic that has wiped out most of our species, and follows a man living in an abandoned airport hanger with his trusty dog. After he hears a mysterious radio transmission, he sets out in search of the source, and possibly a better life than he had before.
The Dog Stars was journalist Peter Heller’s debut novel, so that’s a hell of a way to break in. It sounds like Dog Stars has the makings of a potentially good movie. Let’s hope the Constantin folks don’t screw it up.
