BLAKE is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of a dozen novels, most recently, Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade. His novels have been translated into forty languages and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and Cemetery Dance.
On the screenwriting side, Blake is in the process of adapting UPGRADE into a movie for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners. His international-bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX and executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, with Blake serving as a writer. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created and wrote Good Behavior, the TNT show starring Michelle Dockery based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. Skydance is developing a film adaptation of his novella, Summer Frost, based on Crouch’s script.
Crouch is busy writing a new book and just wrapped production on a nine-episode adaptation of his novel Dark Matter, for Apple TV+, for which he served as Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer, and Writer. Blake lives in Colorado.
If you could choose any real-life celebrity to make a cameo appearance in one of your books, who would it be and why?
Kyle MacLachlan of course! I’ve loved his work ever since Twin Peaks (this will become a theme here) and nothing would bring a wider smile to me than working with him in any capacity.
If you had to choose one of your books to be turned into a cheesy made-for-TV movie, which one would it be and who would you want to play the lead roles?
I would love DRACULAS to be made into a super-camp movie. Clayton Theel (F. Paul Wilson’s genius, gun-toting protag), could be played by Billy Ray Cyrus and everyone would be thrilled.
How have you used the phrase “I’m a writer” to avoid an unpleasant situation? What was it?
In my experience, saying “I’m a writer” invites unpleasant situations, rather than getting me out of them. The next question inevitably is: “Oh, would I have heard of anything you’ve written?” And in my head, I’m thinking, “How in the actual fuck would I know if you’ve heard of anything I’ve written?” But I’ve learned over time that I can’t say that. So, I go inward, and shit gets super awkward.
These days I tell people I’m an accountant, for some reason no one ever asks follow-up questions. I am free to deflect all attention back to the person I’m talking to. Mine them for charter data, and disappear at the first distraction.
Name the strangest/weirdest place you’ve ever written. What made it so odd?
During the filming of Good Behavior, I rewrote a scene we were filming in a morgue, as I was sitting in said morgue. Actually, within a few feet of the cremation furnace.
I wasn’t so weirded out because, dead people. It was weird because of how alive a TV set is. It was like being in a collective state of denial with 100 other people, while trying to imagine how weird it was supposed to be. Fairly meta. Do people still say meta in the Post Facebook world? Whatever, you get the idea.
If you could transport yourself to any fictional universe you’ve seen in a television show or movie, which universe would you go to?
I would go to Twin Peaks for a million reasons.
- Red curtains paired with chevron flooring is my happy place
- Cherry Pie
- Amazing music
- Great coffee
- Backwards talking
- Donna
- Being amongst worse dancers than me
- Shelly
- Casual approach to crime
- Terrific Coffee
- Norma
- Talking logs
- Audrey
- Low property taxes
- Coffee
- I fucking love the Pacific Northwest
- Beautiful mountains
- The roaring lumber trade
- The Black Lodge
- General coziness
- The reason I have a writing career….
Blake Crouch’s adaptation of DARK MATTER is releasing May 8th on Apple+, and a reissue of his horror/thriller novel is coming out October 2024.
