Andy Weir, Emily St. John Mandel, and more close out BookCon 2026 with what makes a successful page-to-screen adaptation

For book fans, book-to-screen adaptations can be a sore subject of changed endings and miscastings. But authors aren't as precious about them. In the final panel of BookCon 2026, authors Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary, The Martian), Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven), May Cobb (The Hunting Wives), and Robinne Lee (The Idea of You) were joined by moderator Jason Blitman (host and producer of the Gays Reading podcast) to discuss the the joys and limitations of bringing a book to the screen.

Cutting straight to the heart of the topic, Blitman kicked things off with the ultimate question: What makes a successful adaptation? Across the panel, there have been varied adaptations. Weir's Project Hail Mary and Cobb's The Hunting Wives had mostly faithful adaptations, while The Idea of You and Station Eleven are larger departures from the source material.

St. John Mandel answered regarding the adaptation of Station Eleven, saying, "They changed every single plot, but they did retain the spirit of the original."

Lee added, "How can I be true to what readers fell in love with and still create something that's going to appeal to a wider audience?"

A potentially surprising sentiment shared by all four authors is that, regardless of their involvement in the adaptations, there was a lack of preciousness toward the projects. That's not to be confused with enthusiasm, however, as everyone on the panel echoed wanting to be champions and cheerleaders for the adaptations.

Novels, television, and movies are such widely different media that change is inevitable in an adaptation, as Weir says, "There are things you can do in a visual medium that are very difficult to do in a narrative medium."

On screen, when you don't need to spend pages filling in interiority or describing scenes and settings, there's room to play and expand characters. Cobb found this to be true in The Hunting Wives as "The husband that takes out the trash is now running for governor."

Lee made the most apt analogy of the panel, saying, "You are going to look at your book as your baby, but you have to look at any adaptation as a kind of distant relative." She went on to say, "When you go to that adaptation, suddenly other people are taking it over, and people are owning those characters. People judging the film, to me, doesn't feel as personal. It doesn't feel like a judgment of my work."

While there's often an adversarial relationship between fans and adaptations of their favorite books, authors enter these projects with an open mind. "I feel like I'm almost like pathologically welcoming of changes in the adaptation process," said St. John Mandel.

Cobb, who first met The Hunting Wives producer, Rebecca Cutter, when she came to visit Texas, recalls driving through the back woods of East Texas. She said Cutter pitched Cobb on her vision for the TV show, describing how she wanted to change the ending, which Cobb met with excitement, saying, "Where were you when I was writing the book?"

In fact, Weir said in his book Artemis, which has been on the adaptation backburner for several years, that when there is movement on the project, he has a list of changes ready to go: "I have identified a bunch of problems in Artemis that I feel are places where the writing is weak. I'm gonna give the directors and the people who are pitching it to studios, I'm going to give a bullet point list of an alternate plot sequence for Artemis."

The panel was the final of BookCon, which returns in 2027 on April 10 and 11.

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