Looking For Alaska Deserves to see the Light of Day.

Looking For Alaska a 2005 book by John Green has been stuck in a production hell for 13 years. The rights have been held to the adaptation of the movie for several years, but production was halted when John Green had a disagreement with the production company. This is one of my favorite books of all time and a must-read, here's why it deserves its movie.

Back around 2015 things were running smoothly for an adaptation, I was following it very closely. They had their Miles "Pudge" cast already and were down to the final two girls to be cast as Alaska. Courtney Eaton and Nicole Peltz were going in for their final callback. In my opinion, Courtney Eaton was the absolute perfect Alaska. I was checking google every day hoping they'd announce her. There were articles coming out every single day about the highly anticipated adaptation. The film sight had already been picked and they were set to move forward. They had hired hundreds of people to go out and prep the sight in Michigan. The film was receiving a lot of hype on social media, as John Green's several other novels had already been adapted into hit movies. Without any warning, all mention of the production seemed to disappear. It slowly just faded out of the public eye, until 2018. It was then announced that Looking For Alaska would be developed into a limited series by Hulu with an entirely different cast. This is most definitely a mistake. Turning into a limited series is going to ruin the book. There's going to be a lot of stuff thrown in that doesn't need to be there and that might not have been in the book at home because they're going to be trying to fill up time. Looking For Alaska is a short 223 pages, there's no way you can pull 8+ hours of content out of that for the 8 episode series.

The book itself is very stylistic and very specific in what the characters look alike, act like, etc., but the series doesn't seem to concerned with sticking to that. Alaska is described very intimately and you get a very clear image of her mystique in your head. She's a very complex and layered character. Her physical appearance is described to the finest details. They've cast Kristine Froseth as Alaska and it looks literally nothing like her. I haven't seen her in much, but from what I have I don't know if she's going to be able to pull off the role of Alaska. Each character has their own description and it's not just Alaska who seems to have taken on a different look, but Miles as well. Charlie Plummer has been cast in the role, and I'm scared. I don't look forward to the rest of the cast announcement.

It is an extreme risk to do this considering how much intense depth, meaning, and symbolism is in the book. This is bound to be lost across 8 episodes where as a movie is shaved down to two hours. In addition, Hulu has done zero promo for this series and barely anyone knows about it. It's tragic to see one of John Green's best selling novels be given this treatment. I've read many of his books and there's not a single one that has stuck with me like Looking For Alaska. If you opened my copy up you'd see hundreds of pen marks, underlines, notes in the margins, and highlights. The binding on my book is cracked from going through it so many times. This was John Green's very first novel and might be his very last adaptation from the looks of it.

What do you think of Looking For Alaska? Leave a comment below!