Warner Bros. Television has optioned Diane Cook’s forthcoming novel “The New Wilderness” to be developed as a TV series by Matt Reeves’ production company 6th and Idaho.
Reeves, whose upcoming “The Batman” film starring Robert Pattinson is slated for 2021, is signed on as an executive producer along with 6th and Idaho’s Daniel Pipski and Adam Kassan. “Watchmen” and “Westworld” writer Carly Wray is also an executive producer. She and 6th and Idaho are both under overall deals with WBTV.
The fictional novel, which was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, will be published on Aug. 11 by Harper Books. Cook is also known for her story collection “Man V. Nature.” Cook will executive produce and write the pilot.
Described as a “wildly imaginative debut novel about a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change,” the book follows Bea, whose five-year-old daughter Agnes is slowly wasting away due to the smog and pollution of the metropolis that most of the population calls home. To save her life, Bea elects for them to join a group of volunteers in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it, moving to the dangerous Wilderness State where they will live as hunter-gatherers. But as Agnes grows accustomed to this new, natural world, Bea realizes that she is beginning to lose her in unexpected ways.