PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I love when movies or shows are adapted from books. I think it opens people up to reading and introduces people to all these amazing authors and their works. Murderbot, a new series on Apple TV+ based on the first book of The Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red, by Martha Wells, is a comedy/sci-fi thriller starring Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood), Noma Dumezweni (Dirty Pretty Things), and David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil), and created by brothers Chris Weitz (director of About a Boy) and Paul Weitz (director of American Pie) and it is wildly entertaining. I highly recommend checking out the show and then reading the book.
A security android struggles with emotions and free will while balancing dangerous missions and desire for isolation, evading detection of its self-hacking as it finds its place.
To celebrate the release of the show, I chatted with creators/producers/directors/writers Chris and Paul about adapting a book to series, working with the author, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I really loved Murderbot.
Chris Weitz: Thank you!
PopHorror: What intrigued you about the original story from The Murderbot Diaries and made you want to adapt the book into a series?
Chris Weitz: I think it’s the same thing that appeals to anybody who starts reading the books, which is that it’s an incredibly interesting, entertaining character, extraordinarily original. And that character’s voice is really powerful and compelling. The trick was how to feed that into a show that we knew was also going to have a lot of other elements to it.
Paul Weitz: Yeah, to me, it’s in this magical terrain that this character is doing stuff that in a different show or movie would be heroic but also there’s an interior monologue where the character’s like, “This suck! I want to be somewhere else.” I think that it is weirdly both extremely realistic and extremely entertaining.
PopHorror: The interior monologue is definitely entertaining! How important was it to you to remain faithful to the books?
Chris Weitz: Really important because I think that when these things succeed, adaptations of books that have a really strong and committed fandom, the key is to capture what is appealing to them and open that up to a broader audience. We had to approach it as fans ourselves and that’s how we first came to the book. It wasn’t presented to us as a piece of intellectual property. Paul read the book and loved it and sent it to me. We were just reading it for fun before we chose to adapt it.
Paul Weitz: The first audience, really in this case, was the author, Martha Wells. It was a great chance to interact with the audience, which is something you don’t get to do. We put everything from the book in and then we added some stuff because the book, All Systems Red, is pretty short. But when we came up with new stuff, we were able to call Martha and say “Hey, we have this idea, what do you think?” And she got to be like, “Oh, that’s cool. I like that idea!” Or, “Why don’t you think about this instead?” That was extremely helpful. We also were able to show her versions of the suit, versions of the characters and the costumes, etc., throughout and get her feedback and make sure she was going to be into it.
PopHorror: I love that. Those fandoms can be pretty hardcore, so keeping them in mind is a good idea. I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
Chris Weitz: The Exorcist. When William Friedkin passed away – RIP – I watched it again and it is still genuinely terrifying.
Paul Weitz: For me, it might be Cure. I think it was a movie made in the 90s, I’m not sure. It’s people who meet this drifter character then go crazy and kill somebody.
Thank you so much to Paul and Chris for taking the time to chat with us. Murderbot premieres on Apple TV+ with two episodes on May 16, 2025, with a new episode every Friday through July 11, 2025.
