Amazon has snagged James S.A. Corey’s Mercy of Gods for a series
The Expanse team has set up a dedicated media company
Amazon is re-teaming with the folks behind The Expanse for a new streaming series, The Captive Wars, based on James S.A. Corey's novel The Mercy of Gods. Released earlier this year, it follows a group of humans who're captured by an alien civilization that quickly conquers their planet, and are forced to make some difficult decisions in order to ensure their survival.
Andrew Liptak
Variety broke the news this morning, noting that it's the first project from a new media company set up by some of the folks behind The Expanse series: authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, showrunner Naren Shankar, and director Breck Eisner. The company is called Expanding Universe, and it apparently has some other projects in the pipeline. According to the group, “Expanding Universe is focused on developing sci-fi narratives with sweeping world-building and elevated storylines, geared toward multi-platform expressions in filmed entertainment, gaming, and publishing.”
Shankar will serve as an executive director, showrunner and writer for the series, along with Abraham and Franck, with Eisner tapped to direct if it gets to that point.
In many ways, this follows the model that Abraham and Franck set when they began adapting The Expanse for television back in 2015 with the Syfy Channel. Franck began work on the story as an MMO game, before repurposing it as a roleplaying game, and then collaborating with Abraham to write a novel, Leviathan Wakes. From there, it grew into a 9 book series. The Syfy channel adapted the first three novels across three seasons with Alcorn Entertainment before the series jumped over to Amazon's Prime Video streaming service for another three seasons before ending in 2022.
Andrew Liptak
The authors closed off The Expanse series in 2021 with Leviathan Falls, noting that they didn't have plans to continue or expand it, although there have been some spinoff comics projects. They revealed in 2018 that they were working on a new series, and formally announced it last year: The Captive Wars, which kicked off with The Mercy of Gods in August. They also published a novella, Livesuit in October, which continues the series. The next novel in the series has yet to be announced.
I'm pretty jazzed to see this news: when I read the book, I wondered when we'd see word about an adaptation, given the success that they had with The Expanse. You don't run a TV series for six years without building up some infrastructure around it, and it would have surprised me if they hadn't at least been having some talks about it since 2018.
Andrew Liptak
I've interviewed Dan and Ty a number of times throughout the course of The Expanse novels, and I've found them to not only be good writers and storytellers, but pretty savvy and practical when it came to the business of writing and adapting their stories. That they've set up a dedicated media company speaks volumes of their recognition that storytelling takes a number of different forms and shapes. One story set in The Expanse universe might not actually work as a novel, but as a standalone novella or short story? I can see this type of setup allowing them to do a range of projects, from the beefier streaming shows to comics, books, or other things like films or short films.
And above all: The Expanse series is really good. Setting aside that I've been a fan of the books from the beginning, they really did a good job realizing and adapting the world. I literally blew through 5-6 episodes last night and went to bed at 2AM before I was completely drawn in by them. (I just crossed into Season 3.) With this news, I can't help but wonder if they have plans to continue adapting the full Expanse story: the TV series only covered the first six books.
The Mercy of Gods is another solid book from the duo, and while reading it, I couldn't help but think that they've got a story and characters that will lend themselves well to a screen adaptation down the road. Hopefully, it'll make it through that production process and onto screens before too long.