PORTLAND, Maine — For most writers, there’s not much that’s more thrilling than a call from Hollywood with a voice on the other end saying, “Hey, we’re interested in making a movie or T.V. series based on your book.”
John Connolly is not, most writers.
His latest novel, “The Land of Lost Things,” is a sequel to one of his most popular works, “The Book of Lost Things,” which came out in 2006. In the seventeen years since then, numerous writers have tried—and failed— to turn it into a screenplay.
“No one had ever managed to write a script for it,” says Connolly, who divides his time between Portland and his native Ireland. “They would get to an outline and then go, ‘Nope! Can’t do it!’”
Eventually, Connolly himself took a crack at it, fully aware of the others who’d been defeated by the challenge of turning the layered, complex novel with fantasy elements into a tight, filmable screenplay.
“I did manage to solve a lot of the problems,” he says. But even he couldn’t come up with a script that worked. “There was just too much in the book to be able to do it.”
The whole experience was, Connolly says, “Horrible. Absolutely, awful.” He just isn’t cut out for the collaboration and compromises that film and television require. His novels get a light touch from editors at this point—that’s because he knows what he’s doing. When a screenplay is coming together many people are involved in the process, and they all have suggestions and those suggestions never stop piling up.
Writing novels is far more satisfying because “I’m just in charge of my own little universe,” he says. “I’m my own benevolent dictator.”
Want to find out more about “The Land of Lost Things”? Watch our interview.