After directing just two features, the innovative creepypasta horror story “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and the acclaimed trans coming-of-age saga “I Saw the TV Glow,” Jane Schoenbrun has established themselves as a singular creative voice. And while all eyes in the indie film world are looking to see what they take on for their next directorial outing, Schoenbrun fans will soon have a chance to experience the auteur’s distinct world-building in a new format.
Hogarth Books, an imprint of Random House Publishing, has acquired the rights to “Public Access Afterworld,” Schoenbrun’s debut novel billed as the conclusion to a trilogy that began with their first two films.
“All of my work so far has been leading up to this,” Schoenbrun said in a statement. “‘Public Access Afterworld’ is the culmination of my so-called ‘screen trilogy’ that I began with ‘World’s Fair’ and ‘TV Glow.’ But unlike those works, which focused mainly on pre-transition, this novel is an epic of trans becoming, and probably the biggest cinematic universe I’ll ever create, my attempt to craft a contemporary queer opus on the scale of ‘Sandman,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ or even, groan, ‘Harry Potter.’”
The official description for “Public Access Afterworld” reads: An epic blend of literary fantasy, coming-of-age, sci fi, and horror, “Public Access Afterworld” traces the mysterious transmissions of a secret television network known as Public Access Afterworld that draws in a wide cast of characters, from two teenage best friends in a suburban New York basement to a housewife during the last days of World War II to a young trans content moderator at a YouTube-like corporation, who becomes an unlikely hero capable of rescuing a century of victims disappeared into the broadcast’s signal. “Public Access Afterworld” is a thrilling and profound novel of identity, conspiracy, the secret occult history of American entertainment, and the narratives that guide our lives and shape our world.
Schoenbrun teased the project during a recent appearance on the A24 podcast, in which they explained that “Public Access Afterworld” was originally written as a three-season TV series before being retooled as a novel when they couldn’t find backers for the ambitious undertaking.
“I just wrote — no one asked me to — but I wrote like 1,600 pages of a screenplay that was meant to be the first two seasons of a three-season TV show,” Schoenbrun said, explaining that the series came close to materializing at HBO but ultimately fell through. “I was like, all right, I’m going to write this thing as like a series of three novels. And I’m going to teach myself how to do that. And I basically spent the next year and a half doing that.”
