An evening with Samantha Shannon, Andy Serkis & Jonathan Cavendish

An evening with Samantha Shannon and the Directors of The Imaginarium Studios, Andy Serkis & Jonathan Cavendish
Watertones, Piccadilly in London
May 2nd, 2014

To celebrate the paperback release of the popular novel The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, the author was joined by The Imaginarium Studios directors actor Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings) and producer Jonathan Cavendish (Bridget Jones’s Diary) at Waterstones in Piccadilly.   The Imaginarium Studios recently purchased the film rights to adapt The Bone Season into a feature film series.  The trio discussed the dystopian novel, its future film adaptation, and ended the evening with a book signing.

Samantha Shannon wrote the The Bone Season at the young age of 19.  The idea was conceived while she was in Seven Dials in Covent Garden and came across a shop that sold crystal balls.  It was there that she thought of the idea of a world in which clairvoyance existed.  In Samantha’s fictional world, clairvoyance is biological, not magical, and some of the physical symptoms experienced by the clairvoyants are inspired by the blinding migraines Samantha experiences in real life.

When building the complex world of the book series, the author first decided what lead character Paige Mahoney would be like, then expanded that into what a London of that era would be like.  From there she expanded her world in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, creating a fictional universe of her own.  Serkis and Cavendish repeatedly described Shannon’s literary world as an onion with many layers to peel, each as intricate as the next.

This is the biggest onion I’ve ever read. – Jonathan Cavendish, The Imaginarium Studios

The evening progressed with Shannon citing her literary influences such as the Bronte sisters, Margaret Atwood and Charles Dickens who influenced the style of the criminal underworld of The Bone Season.  Samantha seemed excited at the prospect of turning her book into a film and even admitted her dream casting choice for Jaxon Hall would be Benedict Cumberbatch and for Nicklas Nygård it would be Alexander Skarsgård.  Andy and Jonathan then pried the audience for their top picks, saying they would take the fan choices to heart when actually approaching talent.  In which case, could Cillian Murphy be up for the role of Warden as one fan strongly suggested?