Dark Matter showrunner talks helming the adaptation of his own novel: "Why would I let someone else raise my child?"
May. 3, 2024Exclusive: Blake Crouch talks creating, showrunning, and executive-producing Dark Matter
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Dark Matter creator Blake Crouch says it made perfect sense to create, executive-produce, and showrun the TV adaptation of his own novel.
“I look back and I’m still not quite sure how that happened either. , I think it’s one of those things where you make a decision one day that I’m gonna do something that’s a little outside my comfort zone. Anything that is great takes I think a lot of risk to do it. And I honestly was really on the fence about doing it for a lot of reasons. I hadn’t showrun a show before,” Crouch tells GameRadar+.
“I had produced some shows and written on them and had them adapted, but not been in the weeds to the extent that that was going to require. And one day I was just like, ‘I love this story so much, why would I let someone else do this?’ There’s the fear of it being done badly, but there’s also like, ‘why would I let someone else raise my child?'”
Continued Crouch: “I feel that way about Dark Matter. Having a kid is a terrifying, beautiful life-changing, and affirming decision. There’s a lot of parallels. I’m a father and I’m also like the father of this show, and there’s a lot of parallels there in terms of putting yourself out there and just making the plunge to try to do something you’ve never done before.”
In the Apple TV series, Joel Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a physicist and family man who is abducted on the streets of Chicago one night by a masked stranger who subsequently throws him into an alternate version of his life.Edgerton was a big fan of the noveland actually called up Crouch and executive producer Matt Tolmach about a role in the show. The author-turned-showrunner says he figured out pretty early on how to helm his own adaptation, and that it wasn’t as hard as one may think.
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“I have to pick one or none. And we were finding ourselves in that position. We were trying to make the movie, and in the show those problems vanished and it became which great new things do we want to bring into the story.”
The cast includes Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Oakes Fegley, Dayo Okeniyi, Amanda Brugel, and Jimmi Simpson – the latter of whom says it was “so weird” working with a “novelist [who had] become screen.”
“Not that he hadn’t written screen, but for this project novelist then screenwriter, then showrunner, because of the depth of responsibility with showrunner… it’s mind-boggling. And it’s not something I think most writers would ever choose to take on unless they were slightly narcissistic,” Simpson tells GR+. “He made it easy. Honestly, I would’ve accepted any amount of ego with what he was undertaking, just because that’s what my job is, to accept whoever’s creating to be however they wanna be […] but he made it a goddamn joy and a pleasure.”
Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for GamesRadar+ currently based in the Midwest. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent’s Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.
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