St. Olaf professor’s novel optioned for possible TV series

St. Olaf College Writer in Residence Benjamin Percy’s newest book, Red Moon, may soon become a TV series.

FOX TV has optioned Red Moon and hired Percy and Academy Award-winning writer Akiva Goldsman to co-write the series pilot for producer Ilene Staple. Goldsman won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for A Beautiful Mind, and his filmography also includes I am Legend and Cinderella Man.

Red Moon, which comes out on paperback Tuesday, has garnered widespread critical acclaim and was listed by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the best books of 2013.

The novel’s alternative vision of America features werewolves living alongside humans as second-class citizens, taking mind-numbing drugs to suppress their monstrous sides. In this society of unrest, Percy weaves together six story lines following characters that include a politician on an anti-werewolf crusade, a pair of young lovers, and a history professor involved in a lycan rebellion against the government.

Publisher’s Weekly has praised the book as an “extraordinary new supernatural thriller … a blend of alternate history and weird fiction that holds a mirror up to contemporary America to reflect its fears and biases … an ambitious, epic novel that deserves to reach a larger readership beyond genre audiences.”

Red Moon has also caught the attention of Amazon.com, which named it one its top books of the year. The book is Percy’s second novel. Percy’s fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, GQ, Time, Men’s Journal, Outside, the Wall Street Journal, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, and the Paris Review.