Silo Creators Open Up About Expanding the Sci-Fi Story for Apple TV+

When it comes to adapting beloved novels into live-action, not all creators have the benefit of having the mind behind those stories involved in the process, but for Graham Yost and the upcoming Silo TV series, author Hugh Howey was enlisted as a producer to serve as a collaborator on the process. Yost recalled how, not only did the project have the benefit of being able to lean into Howey as a resource, but also that the author supported the TV series deviating from his source material in ways that could be more fitting for live-action than for a novel. Silo premieres on Apple TV+ on May 5th.

“We were breaking the first season just roughly and really focusing on the first episode. And we could ask [Hugh] questions, ‘What about this? What about that?’” Yost recalled in an interview about the process with ComicBook.com. “What we found out very quickly was he was not precious with any of this and is far more willing to kill off a character than I am, but would also come up with, ‘Well, we could do this and do that. And I was thinking that maybe the reason that this developed was because of that.’ There was an openness to it that was very, very helpful. There have been times over the course of shooting the first season when we would reach out to him and say, ‘So we’re thinking about this,’ a lot in terms of the reality of the silo.”

Silo is the story of the last ten thousand people on Earth, their mile-deep home protecting them from the toxic and deadly world outside. However, no one knows when or why the silo was built and any who try to find out face fatal consequences. Rebecca Ferguson stars as Juliette, an engineer, who seeks answers about a loved one’s murder and tumbles onto a mystery that goes far deeper than she could have ever imagined, leading her to discover that if the lies don’t kill you, the truth will.

The ensemble cast starring alongside Ferguson includes Academy Award-winner Tim Robbins (Mystic River), Common (The Chi), Emmy-nominee Harriet Walter (Succession), Chinaza Uche (Dickinson), Avi Nash (The Walking Dead), Critics Choice Award and NAACP winner David Oyelowo (Selma), and Emmy-nominee Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation). 

Howey himself went on to note how, by bringing the story to life as a TV series, it helps expand upon the world that he created to offer glimpses of new perspectives.

“I think the beauty of adapting something is it’s like a hologram,” Howey shared of the experience. “If you break a hologram in half, you still see the full image, but it’s just less detail. You lose some resolution. And telling the story at a different medium just adds another angle and more nuance and detail. Now that I’ve read the books and seen the TV show, my overall image of the story is crisper instead of just being different.”

Silo premieres on Apple TV+ on May 5th.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments!