Teacup’s Ian McCulloch Opens Up About Adapting the Sci-Fi Novel

Last week saw the premiere of Teacup on Peacock, with its first two episodes igniting excitement among audiences who were already familiar with the novel Stinger upon which the series was based. While the original novel from Robert McCammon might not have the same built-in legacy as something like a Stephen King story, this allowed producer Ian McCulloch to make tweaks to the source material as necessary. Even though this new take on the material might deviate from the original story, it manages to blend together horror, sci-fi, and drama into an entirely compelling experience that will keep audiences guessing right up to the end. New episodes of Teacup premiere on Thursdays on Peacock.

“I read the book and I knew what I wanted to do. Pretty much by the time I finished the book, I knew what I wanted to do,” McCulloch shared with ComicBook about his thoughts on changing the core story. “I thought it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, so I went and I wrote the script for the first episode, which, shockingly, almost four years later is pretty much the same script as the episode that you see. I sent that script to Atomic Monster, to James Wan’s company, who had brought me the book. I said, ‘Here’s what I wanna do,’ they said, ‘Oh, we love this, great.’ I said, ‘Let’s show this to Robert McCammon,’ and we sent it to McCammon, and he said, ‘Oh that’s great, let’s do that,’ and he pretty much said, ‘Go with God.’ I didn’t talk to him until we were in the middle of production. We brought him to production, we brought him to the set and had him there for a while, he had a fantastic time, and he’s over the moon about it, which is really, really … I feel very lucky that he was so open. The book still exists, but this is a very different thing, so I’m just glad he was on board and took a big leap, big swing, and it paid off.”

Teacup follows a disparate group of people in rural Georgia who must come together in the face of a mysterious threat in order to survive.

Even if an audience isn’t familiar with the source material, the themes of paranoia, invasion, and otherworldly encounters will evoke familiarity with projects like The Thing, A Quiet Place, and Annihilation. McCulloch addressed how he developed the project in a way that was influenced by horror greats without directly replicating their approaches to horror.

“It comes from having done this for a while. I’ve written a lot of scripts, some good, some bad, some produced, some not produced,” the writer explained of honoring his influences. “Years ago, I was an actor, and there’s the idea that you go and you do all your research and you learn your lines and you go over it again and again and again and you walk out on stage and you forget all of that and you’re just this person and you say these things, and that’s how I feel about writing. I’ve seen all the movies you referenced, and hundreds more, and I just trust that I’m not gonna steal something.”

He added, “Although, I’m not against stealing, that’s what artists do, we steal stuff, but those things are just part of my DNA now. Those things that I enjoyed, and, ‘Oh, that moment from that movie worked really well,’ when I end up in Teacup with a moment that feels somewhat similar to that, I probably, somewhere in the back of my brain, it goes, ‘Well this worked really well there so maybe you can do it this way, it works just as well for the same reasons, or maybe for different reasons.’”

While only one season was ordered initially, McCulloch isn’t planning on leaving the series behind once the season finale debuts on October 31st.

“It’s definitely not a one-and-done situation, to my mind, I would like to continue the story,” McCulloch confirmed. “I’ve thought about, both things that have to do with this family’s continuing story, obviously, because I love these characters, even the ones that don’t make it to the end of the season, I love them, but I’ve also thought about other parts of the country, other parts of the world. As long as it all funnels back. It wouldn’t be an anthology, it is following one story. Characters come and go, different characters have different experiences that perhaps would lead them to our characters from Season 1. I’ve left it open because I’d like to … I don’t know what’s going to happen in the end, and that, to me, is exciting. I like to be the first audience for this story as it unfolds, if that makes sense.”

New episodes of Teacup premiere on Thursdays on Peacock.

What do you think of the series? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!