Hugh Howey's Silo Book Series Was Nearly Adapted By A Legendary Director

Apple TV

A major Hollywood producer or studio picking up the screen rights to a book can be very exciting news for the author. It can also, unfortunately, often amount to diddly-squat, given how many published works are optioned for movie or TV adaptations that never come to pass. Even projects based on literary phenomena aren't guaranteed to happen in a timely manner. Just ask Lois Lowry, who spent 20 years waiting for her Newbery Medal-winning 1993 dystopian novel and secondary school reading staple "The Giver" to make the jump to the big screen.

Sadly, the 2014 movie version of "The Giver" was a mediocre "Hunger Games" knockoff that misfired across the board. (At least it wasn't produced by Bill Cosby, who apparently held the film rights in 1994.) Luckily, things worked out far better for Hugh Howey's own venture into dystopian fiction with "Wool," the first chapter in his "Silo" book series. As Publisher Weekly reported in May 2012, the movie rights to "Wool" (itself comprised of a short story and four novellas Howey had previously written) were promptly scooped up by 20th Century Fox, Ridley Scott's Scott Free, and Steven Zaillian's Film Rites. Reading between the lines, the intention was probably for Zaillian to write the film adaptation for Scott to direct, reuniting the two after their hit 2007 biographical crime thriller "American Gangster" starring Denzel Washington.

That never actually happened (cue the downbeat trombone sound), and the "Silo" movie lingered in limbo for years before becoming an Apple TV show that debuted in 2023. Not that Howey's upset, as he's made it crystal clear he's just as pleased with the "Silo" TV series as everyone else. For that matter, he always knew better than to hold his breath for Scott's "Silo" film.

20th Century Studios

The "Silo" franchise checks many of the same boxes as Ridley Scott's most celebrated sci-fi films. Like "Alien," it's got an assertive, dystopian blue collar heroine (namely, Juliette Nichols, as played by Rebecca Ferguson on the "Silo" TV show), and it explores themes of class similar to those in that classic and "Blade Runner." What's more, the "Silo" universe is a setting where Earth's atmosphere has been rendered unbreathable in the future. This forces humanity, now residing in underground silos, to grow food in alternate ways, much like the astronaut Mark Watney in both Andy Weir's novel "The Martian" and Scott's movie adaptation.

When Hugh Howey spoke on the "Geek's Guide to the Galaxy" podcast in 2013 (as transcribed by Lightspeed), he made it clear he already knew Scott's "Silo" film was a long shot. To illustrate his point, he alluded to the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's Nebula Award-winning sci-fi novel "Ender's Game," which reached theaters later that year. "It's one of my favorite books of all time, and it spent decades in development hell, and it's just now [finally] coming out," Howey noted. He continued:

"For so long I'd been telling everyone there's no chance, but the producers and the executives at Fox are leading me to believe otherwise. So, I would say right now the chances are about 50-50, which is huge, I think, for film. It's about as good as the odds ever get."

"Silo" reads like Scott's jam, no doubt, but one would be hard-pressed to complain that things didn't work out great with Apple TV's adaptation. As for Scott and Steven Zaillian, they instead re-teamed on the white-washed nonsense that was 2014's "Exodus: Gods and Kings." Woulda, coulda, shoulda, Ridley.