Addressing Concerns About the Bitten TV Show

Bitten is being made into a TV show in Canada. Every few weeks, I get a wave of complaints and concerns, likely on the heels of some fresh media coverage. While I’ve been answering them individually, I’ve avoided posting official responses because I hate calling attention to the negative. Most readers that I speak to are as excited by the prospect as I am. But answering those questions individually does get repetitious, and you know I’d rather using those keystrokes for stories!

So let’s tackle some common concerns:

1) Why did you sell the rights? It’ll ruin the books.

I can 100% guarantee you that the TV show will not alter one word of my books. They won’t be reissued with changes, nor will anything in the TV show affect upcoming stories. The show is a completely separate entity.

While there are some readers who would prefer that a TV version didn’t exist, there are many more who want one. The #1 question I get asked is: when will series x become a movie/TV show? There’s enough of a demand that I’ve never felt I could refuse to sell rights. For those who want to see the show, they’ll now get that chance. Those who don’t…? Skip it. I promise I won’t come to your house and force you to tune in ;)

2) Why did you sell it to a Canadian channel? I’m not in Canada.

Being Canadian, I’m actually very pleased about how homegrown this production is. But I know that doesn’t make non-Canadian readers feel any better! I’m sure, though, that even if it doesn’t get picked up for outside distribution, it will be available somehow, in some way, for those who want to see it.

3) Why aren’t you playing a bigger role in the production to make sure it matches your vision of the book?

It’s not supposed to match my vision. This will be my story as reimagined by others. Also, I know nothing about TV. Nada. And I don’t want to. My passion is for prose, and I’ve grown accustomed to only doing things I really want to do. Yeah, I’m hopelessly spoiled. I have many projects on the go, all of which I adore, and I jealously guard my time for them. So we’ll leave this one to the experts.

4) But they’ll change things!

Yep, they will. Again, this isn’t a direct translation of my books to the screen. The story that I wrote needs to be reimagined for another medium. Those who are reimagining it are writers. They have their own creative vision, including ideas for things they want to add or change. Again, it has no impact on the books, and nothing they change for the show will affect future stories I write in this world.

5) I just saw the cast and so-and-so looks nothing like I imagined

What readers are seeing online are still shots of the cast. All one can evaluate at this point is whether the actors resemble readers’ images of the characters. That would be perfectly valid if this was a graphic novel. But it’s a TV show, which means that what counts is how those actors portray the characters. I would rather have an actor who looked nothing like my character but totally “got” the part, rather than one who was my dead-on image of him/her but couldn’t, well, act.

If you want to see my image of the characters, you need to look at illustrations, like the one Xaviere did below for the Otherworld guys (L-R Clay, Lucas, Karl, Kristof, Jeremy) And as I paste that bookmark onto this post, I can hears some readers saying “But that’s not how I pictured them at all!” Which illustrates the other half of this problem: even if the actors matched my image, they wouldn’t match the images of many readers. Best, then, to accept the differences and reserve judgment until you see the portrayals.

I’ve been dealing with this issue since back when Bitten first came out and Angelina Jolie was signed to play Elena. The temptation to say “OMG, guys, it’s ANGELINA JOLIE! Who cares what colour her hair is?” was often overwhelming. Seriously, though, as I’ve often explained, she read the book and wanted the part because she “got” the character. That was a thousand times more important to me than whether she looked like “my” Elena. The same applies for the cast in this new version.**

Final Thoughts

That line about reserving judgment until you see the portrayal is what I’d ask of all disconcerted readers. It’s like my books. If you read the synopsis for my next release and you aren’t interested, don’t read it. If you’re curious but uncertain, check it out of the library or read the free excerpt. Still don’t like it? Skip it. But few things drive me crazier than seeing one star reviews for books I haven’t even finished yet, the “review” based on whatever impressions the reader has gathered from a synopsis, cover art or just me blathering about the concept. The same idea applies here. The producers have gathered a fantastic and talented team to work on this, and everyone is committed to producing a great show. Let’s give them a chance to do that.

** Note: you’ll see that I’m referring to the Jolie casting in the past tense, in reference to the original (12 years ago) plans for a movie. I then go on to say my feelings about that still apply to this cast. That means Jolie is NO LONGER signed to star. Even after adding a clarifying footnote yesterday, I continued to get “What do you mean she’s playing in the TV show?” I’ve now rearranged the order of paragraphs, in case that helps. I could just take the paragraph out, but then I’d get “Wait, didn’t this used to say Jolie was signed to star? What happened?” Sigh. LOL.