BookCon 2026 ended with Andy Weir, Emily St. John Mandel, May Cobb and Robinne Lee on one stage talking about the one question that follows every popular book to screen: what changes, and what has to stay the same. Jason Blitman, host and producer of the Gays Reading podcast, moderated the final panel of the convention.
The discussion landed on a practical truth. Some adaptations can stay close to the source and still work, as Weir said of Project Hail Mary and Cobb did of The Hunting Wives. Others move much further away, as with The Idea of You and Station Eleven, yet still keep what the authors see as the heart of the story. Mandel said of Station Eleven, “They changed every single plot, but they did retain the spirit of the original.”
That balance came up again and again. Lee said the challenge is to stay true to what readers loved while making something that can reach a wider audience. She also said an author has to treat a finished adaptation less like a child and more like “a kind of distant relative.” Mandel said she is “almost like pathologically welcoming of changes” in the adaptation process, while Weir said there are things visual storytelling can do that are hard to pull off on the page.
Cobb brought the panel back to the hard edge of the process. She said Rebecca Cutter pitched her vision for The Hunting Wives after visiting Texas and driving through the back woods of East Texas, then explained how she wanted to change the ending. Cobb’s response: “Where were you when I was writing the book?”
The conversation also pointed to what may come next for Weir. He said that if Artemis moves forward, he already has a list of changes ready for directors and studio pitchers, including what he sees as weak spots in the novel and an alternate plot sequence. BookCon returns in 2027 on April 10, giving the event another turn at the same debate: how much a screen version can change before it stops feeling like the book people loved.