While our efforts to land an interview with Red Rising author Pierce Brown have been unsuccessful and that pesky court order kept me from coming within 100 yards of the Texas Teen Book Festival this past weekend (don’t ask), Mr Brown did conduct an AMA on Reddit today and answered two of Gabbing Geek’s questions. Find out the answers and other interesting tidbits after the break!
First, and most importantly, Mr Brown answered two of our questions. The first one was an attempt to get around the whole “I like the final product so much I won’t change a thing.”
Q: Now that you’re wrapping up the series, if you were forced by Razor-wielding hooligans to make one significant edit to Red Rising, what would it be?
A: Can I make Apollo die slower?
The second question took a different approach from the inevitable avalanche of movie questions:
Q: I’m sure we’ll get plenty of questions about the Red Rising movie status, so let’s flip that. If Red Rising were being made into a cable series, which network would you most want it on: AMC, HBO, Netflix, Showtime, or Starz?
A: HBO. But with Game of Thrones on, the network would feel a bit EPIC oversaturated
In addition to these two outstanding questions, Mr Brown answered a number of other, lesser questions with some interesting information. You can check out the entire AMA thread by following this link but here are the answers I found most compelling:
- Sevro is his favorite character in the series.
- His sister runs the Sons of Ares fan account for the series.
- He is working on a fantasy series after the Red Rising series is complete this January.
- The movie is still a go with Marc Foster set to direct. Mr Brown got to do the first two drafts of the screenplay. Some early casting ideas he had if he were making the movie include the following (and obviously he was using my budget from when we did the same on the podcast):
- Eddie Redmayne as the Jackal (I’m guessing he imagined that before Jupiter Ascending)
- Paul Bettany as Fitchner (interesting because I always imagined Fitchner as much older than Bettany)
- Charlize Theron as the Sovereign
- Russell Crowe as Lorn
- His favorite chapter or passage is either the duel between Cassius and Darrow or this paragraph from the Iron Rain:
- “To my left and right, the falling soldiers look lik eraging lightning bugs jerked out of some Carver’s fantasy. I admire one to my left, the bronze sun is behind him as he falls, silhoetting him, immortalizing him in that singular moment–one I know I shall never forget–so that he looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory. His exoskeleton sheds its friction armor, as Lucifer might have shed the fetters of heaven, feathers of flame peeling off, fluttering behind. Then a missiles slashes the sky and christens him mortal once again.”
- When asked how he sleeps at night after killing so many beloved characters, Mr Brown responded “In a bed of your tears.”
- He also noted how Red Rising is not Young Adult despite many stores/sites categorizing it as such.
- A Red Rising graphic novel is in the works.
- The movie that rocked his world this year: Mad Max.
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