Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, the sci-fi writing duo known as James S.A. Corey, already know what it’s like to see one of their works adapted for the screen. The Expanse, which started out at Syfy and then jumped to Prime Video, ran for six seasons and explored a somewhat compressed (especially at the end there) take on the nine-part Corey book series. So they are well aware of the challenges that await when The Captive’s War, based on their new trilogy, begins its own journey to becoming an Amazon series.
Really big challenges, in fact, as the authors—who are producing the show—admitted in a new interview with Polygon. “We made it so freaking hard to adapt into a TV show,” Abraham said. “The Captive’s War has a lot of things that would need a lot of work before they turn it into a screenplay: a lot of interiority in the characters, a lot of amazing, spectacular aliens. All of that stuff is challenging. And yeah, we just leaned right into it.”
Franck added that despite the success of The Expanse, the duo didn’t have a TV show on the brain when they started writing their latest series, which opened with 2024’s The Mercy of Gods.
“We were either done or mostly done with the first book before we had the discussions about adaptation,” he explained. “So we weren’t writing a book and a screenplay of that book in parallel. So far, we’ve never done that.”
If you’re hoping The Captive’s War might make its way to screens soon, that doesn’t seem like it’ll be the case. The authors told Polygon they’re still in the very earliest stages of that process.
Franck likened adaptations to “a million tiny little blocks stacked on top of each other,” and “at this point, I think we’ve stacked the third block.”
Since The Mercy of the Gods arrived in 2024, The Captive’s War series has also seen the publication of the standalone novella Livesuit (also in 2024) and The Faith of Beasts in April 2026. The third novel does not yet have an announced title or release date.
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