Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is headed to the small screen, Variety reports.
Tomorrow Studios and Scott Free Productions will adapt Franzen’s novel as a television series, which will be written by Melanie Marnich, known for her work on shows including Big Love, The Big C, and The Affair.
Freedom, published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, follows a Midwestern married couple with seemingly perfect lives but who are facing a series of challenges that threaten to tear them apart.
The novel was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A critic for Kirkus didn’t care for the book, however, writing, “If ‘freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ (as Kris Kristofferson wrote), this book uses too many words to convey too much of nothing.”
Franzen and Marnich are among the series’ executive producers, along with British filmmaker Ridley Scott.
“Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is a laugh-out-loud, emotional knock-out of a novel and we couldn’t have conjured a better writer to adapt this material than the brilliant Melanie Marnich,” Scott told Variety.
Franzen praised Marnich as “a perfect choice” to adapt his novel.
“Of all my novels, Freedom seems to me the most directly pertinent to our current social and political moment—globally the fragile earth, nationally the great red/blue divide,” he said.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
