Panic is a fun binge, and a lot less taxing than the trauma of The Wilds girls, driven by the select number of high schoolers who dare to take part in the small town game and the series of entanglements that take place as the challenges heat up, and begin to disrupt the entire town. Lauren Oliver, who famously also wrote Before I Fall, which became a movie in 2017, and the Delirium book series, had never adapted material for TV before. But I really fell in love with these characters and I wanted to unpack them, so I feel that way about almost every element.Īs we’ve recently seen with book-to-TV adaptations such as Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, having the author behind their own series really does help an adaptation shine. Almost everything I was able to unpack and that was always my dream because I don’t usually feel this way about my books but I really felt funny enough with Panic that I had barely touched the surface of it and maybe that’s because it came and went as kind of an allegory where you are writing a spare amount toward a theme. As she told us, she actually felt a ton of freedom as the showrunner adapting her own material to explore elements of the novel she didn’t touch on when initially writing Panic:Īnd of course more of the context of the town. If you’ve read the book, you’ll notice some changes in terms of the male characters specifically, who Lauren Oliver sought to expand with the adaptation of her 400 page book into a 10-episode series. Ray’s character has become very different, in the book he was essentially a foil, an antagonist really could have described the entirety of his personality including his brother. Like all the male characters are completely underdeveloped, like Bishop’s character and of course they all changed with respect to the actors. I’m the only one who can do like sexism in reverse I realize in my books.

I mean like Bishop’s character in the book, he’s really like a romantic foil. When asked about the changes from the book she’s proud of, she said this:Īlmost everything. When CinemaBlend spoke to Panic’s author and showrunner Lauren Oliver, she shared how adapting her book into a series helped her expand her story.

Except this series is set in a realistic world, where teens go to insane lengths to win the huge prize of $50,000, more than enough to leave their small Texas town and start a new life. Panic has been likened to Hunger Games in a sense of young people putting their lives on the line to come out victorious amidst unfortunate circumstances.

Panic by lauren oliver