Dark Matter Author Reveals Wayward Pines TV Series Taught Him What He Didn’t Want for New Show

It’s been a while since Wayward Pines was on the air. The series, adapted from Blake Crouch’s novels, featured work by some seriously talented people, and had a critically-acclaimed first season that seemed to fizzle immediately once it came back from its hiatus. Speaking with ComicBook about Dark Matter, the latest adaptation of his writing, Crouch said that the experiences on Wayward Pines helped him figure out what he wants and what he doesn’t want when adapting his own writing for the screen.

And, yeah — he’s a little salty about that second season, too.

“Wayward Pines was the first time I’d ever walked onto a film set. I was a starry-eyed, 32, and looking at the first thing of mine being adapted. I thought it was goign to be amazing and great, and a lot of it was,” Crouch told ComicBook. “Filmmaking can be tumultuous and there’s a lot of that there. It was an extreme scenario. I’m super proud of season 1 of Wayward Pines. We should have stopped there….But it taught me so much. It was like, filmmaking is a full-contact sport and I was lucky to be let in and actually see how the sausage gets made, and that’s not something that a lot of novelists are made privy to. It took me a while to recover from that and decide, ‘Do I want to have a part of that in something of mine?’ And finally when the opportunity for Dark Matter came up, I decided yeah I do, but I’ve also learned a lot from it. I know the things I don’t want, and I know the things I do want to shoot for.” 

He added that while he has some regrets about the way Wayward Pines went, he seems to see it as a net positive experience — or at least one where he and others learned a lot.

“A lot of friends — the Duffer Brothers came up on Wayward Pines, I came up on Wayward Pines, a lot of directors there,” Crouch said. “We call it ‘Wayward Pines University,’ because that’s where a lot of us were thrown into this crazy, amazing situation, and we learned, and took things from it that allowed us to go to the next step. A lot of people came out of Wayward Pines and have gone on to do amazing things.”

Below, you can check out the official synopsis for Dark Matter:

Jason Dessen is abducted into an alternate version of his life; to get back to his true family, he embarks on a harrowing journey to save them from the most terrifying foe imaginable: himself; based on Blake Crouch’s best-selling book.

Dark Matter premieres globally with the first two episodes on Wednesday, May 8, 2024 followed by one new episode weekly through June 26, 2024.