Will John Green Write A TV Show?

With so many of John Green's books being made into movies, it feels like his stories will come to life on the big screen forever — and that's not a bad thing. However, it's interesting to think about what other mediums he could tackle, especially when it comes to television. Imagine if The Fault in Our Stars had been able to chronicle Hazel and Gus' love story week by week rather than all at once. It would be like Parenthood levels of crying — or maybe even more — but would give a more in-depth look at their incredible relationship in Green's own words.

Since that book became a movie (and a perfect one at that), it's obviously not going to appear on TV anytime soon, but will John Green ever write a TV show? Probably not. In a Tumblr post, John reblogged his brother Hank's response to this question and shut down the idea. It turns out that a few years back, the Green brothers were approached by a cable network to do a show, but they offered them a "hilariously low" salary. In their discussion about how bad it was, John accidentally hit "reply all" and inadvertently told the company how terrible the rate was. To the brothers' surprise, the network came back with a huge salary increase, and that made the Greens realize that they were being taken advantage of since they were clearly worth more. From then on, it put a bad taste in their mouths and they stuck to YouTube and movies. Given what they make together on YouTube and the success John has had with TFIOS' and Paper Towns ' adaptations so far, I'd say that's a good call.

John went a more in-depth about why he won't be doing a TV show, ultimately saying, "I love TV, but I don’t want to make it. This is also how I feel about sausage." Read his whole explanation below:

Interestingly, Hank is misremembering the story.

I replied to the original email, “This is two orders of magnitude below what would interest me,” and they eventually came back with an offer that was two orders of magnitude higher.

(So if their initial offer had been $1,000, after my accidental reply all, they came back with $100,000.

Anyway, the whole affair was completely embarrassing, but from it, I learned that I don’t want a TV show, because I love YouTube. We get to control the stuff that we make and make it with people I care about. We get to make it directly for people who love it without having to worry about whether a sponsor or advertiser will also love it. And we don’t have to make it a certain length to make advertisers happy.

I love TV, but I don’t want to make it. This is also how I feel about sausage.