HBO orders Damon Lindelof's The Leftovers to series
The trend of HBO picking up high-profile book adaptations—only to get, like, 35 pages in and set them aside in favor of more trashy vampire sex stories—has finally been reversed: Deadline reports that the network has given a series order to The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof’s TV version of the Tom Perrotta novel, picking up 10 episodes to start. As previously reported, Justin Theroux will star in the drama about a world that’s been through the Rapture, with a group of disparate survivors—including some played by Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, Michael Gaston, Amy Brenneman, and Brad Leland—who are left behind like God's unwanted casserole, condemned to figure out how to go on with their lives without so much as Kirk Cameron to guide them. And unlike Lost, you already know they’re in a kind of purgatory, so you can similarly get on with your life.