The series adaptation of Elin Hiderbrand’s The Five-Star Weekend dropped on Peacock this week.
Based on her 2023 novel, the series stars Jennifer Garner. Bekah Brunstetter (Maid, This Is Us) created and wrote the series adaptation.
The first adaptation of her work, The Perfect Couple, was a hit for Netflix and has spawned a Season 2, which will be based on her book Swan Song.
In other words, Elin Hiderbrand is hot in Hollywood.
Speaking with the New York Times this weekend, Hilderbrand offered, “I think seven or eight other books of mine are in development.”
The next logical step for many novelists — Brett Easton Ellis, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote come to mind — is to begin writing specifically for the screen, be it big or small. Not Hildebrand.
“I have no interest in writing television,” the writer told the NYT. She is, it seems, happy writing wildly popular novels.
Her attitude toward TV adaptations is to let the showrunner run the show.
“I will talk to the writer before they get started,” she said. “It’s their job to turn it into compelling television.”
Hilderbrand is not precious about seeing her work translated exactly from page to screen.
“People can go and read the book – and I hope they do – but the show needed to move along. It needs to move at its own pace, it needs to shift and move and change things so that every episode keeps you wanting more,” the author recently told USA Today. “And I basically gave Bekah Brunstetter, who is the showrunner, carte blanche: ‘Do what you want to make the best television. The only thing I was concerned about was Nantucket. I wanted to make sure that Nantucket was done authentically and correctly.”
Hilderbrand’s next novel is The Thoroughbreds, which she wrote with her daughter. It will be released in September.
In her interview with the Times, Hilderbrand revealed she is already working on a new book, The Novelists.
It’s about four writers who meet at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop — where Hilderbrand was a teaching and writing fellow — and whose careers follow divergent paths.
“I really wanted to write about writers and professional jealousy,” she told the Times, adding that the story has been gestating “for a long time.”
