Variety reports that Patrick Somerville, the head writer behind the Paramount and Netflix limited series Maniac, has signed on with Paramount again. This time he will produce two more original series in anticipation of the release of WarnerMedia’s independent streaming service, expected in beta in the fourth quarter of 2019. The two stories, Made For Love and Station Eleven, are very different in genre and tackling both at the same time will prove an interesting challenge for Somerville.
Made For Love will be adapted from the novel of the same name by Alissa Nutting and will executive produced and directed by S.J. Clarkson (The Defenders, Untitled Game of Thrones Prequel). Somerville will also executive produce as well as serve as showrunner. Other producers include Dean Bakopoulos, Liza Chasin, and Paramount TV. The adaptation is described as a quasi-comedy in the vein of Fleabag, with ten episodes ordered so far. The logline reads:
The half-hour comedy [will] follow Hazel Green, a 30-something woman on the run after 10 years in a suffocating marriage to an unstable tech billionaire. She soon discovers that her ex-husband has already implanted a revolutionary monitoring device – the Made for Love – in her brain, allowing him to track her, watch her, and know her thoughts and feelings as she tries to stay alive. Also, there are dolphins.
Station Eleven will also be adapted by from a novel of the same name, by Emily St. John Mandel, and it will be executive produced and directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta, Barry). Along with Somerville and Murai, Nate Matteson, Dylan Russell, Scott Delman, and Scott Steindorff will produce. Paramount will serve as the main production studio with Somerville acting as showrunner. The logline for this post-apocalyptic limited series reads:
The series will air as a saga spanning multiple timelines, with ten episodes ordered so far. The show will follow the stories of survivors of a devastating flu as they attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew while holding on to the best of what’s been lost.
Screen Rant notes that Somerville is not unfamiliar with brick and mortar writing and publishing either. As well as working on HBO’s The Leftovers and the aforementioned joint collaboration that was Maniac, Somerville has also written a few novels and short story collections including The Cradle, This Bright River, and The Universe in Miniature in Miniature.
As for the original novels, Deadline reports Station Eleven was both a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Meanwhile Made For Love was named the best book of 2017 by GQ, The New Yorker, and NPR.