and Universal, Twentieth Century Fox along with producer Ridley Scott bought the rights in 2007 for $1.75 million, when the book was still an unfinished manuscript of just 397 pages. It’s certainly not with a movie, which was the original intention when, after a ferocious bidding war with Sony, Warner Bros.

How do you trash-compact that into a linear narrative that will appeal to a large audience? It even has the imprimatur of King, who called it “one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”īut getting it to the screen was no easy feat.įirst of all, the trilogy sprawls across 800,000 words, 2,000 pages, 90 years and “a cast of thousands,” as Cronin puts it. It has it all: bestseller status, devoted fan base, a nasty jungle virus, a medical experiment on prisoners gone frighteningly wrong, global pandemic and the vampire/zombie-like creatures that result, haunting the world with their hunger for human flesh. In a post-“Game of Thrones” and “Walking Dead” world, “The Passage,” the first book of which came out in 2010, seems like natural grist for the TV-industry mill. “The Passage” - his chillingly apocalyptic trilogy, which has been favorably compared to Stephen King’s “The Stand” - is now a series on Fox, beginning at 8 p.m. But these days he has been spending a lot of time dealing with another locale: Hollywood. I don’t have to drive the freeways very much.”Ĭronin, 56, usually splits his time between this city and Cape Cod, Mass., where he and his family are fixing up a house. Stephen’s, which is, like, two blocks from the apartment. “My son went to school over there, went to St. “I rent an apartment here, one of those new, very comfortable midrises,” he says, referring to the neighborhood.

Justin cronin the passage trilogy