Today, the all-new thrilling series Teacup, inspired by the bestselling novel by Robert McCammon, Stinger, premieres on Peacock. The series takes place on a farm in rural Georgia, where a family and their neighbors are trapped but must come together to stop a mysterious and deadly threat.

Recently, writer and executive producer Ian McCulloch spoke with SciFi Vision about the new series, including adapting the book and how he decided what parts to use, if that affects his creativity or not, casting, and more.

The first two episodes of Teacup are available now to stream on Peacock.

Watch the full interview below.



SCIFI VISION:   Can you talk about sort of how you decide what to pull from the book versus what you can add of your own, since obviously it's based around the book.

IAN McCULLOCH:   Well, it was kind of a leap of faith, because I read the book, and I knew what I wanted to do with it, but it meant taking 75, 80% of the book and putting it to the side and just dealing with the core story of this family and some of the things that happened to them in the book, but not dealing with the vast majority of characters and things that happen in the book. I knew it would work, but that doesn't mean that everybody else knew it would work. So, I went off and wrote the first script without talking to anyone, sent that script to Atomic Monster, James Wan's company, who had brought me the book in the first place. I said, “Here's what I want to do. Here's proof of concept, this script. If you want to do it, great. If you don't, then we'll find something else to work on,” And luckily, they were on board. The next step was Robert McCammon. We said, “Hey, you know that they've optioned the book. This is what I want to do. Are you okay with it?” And he was thrilled with the idea of not doing a direct adaptation, doing an inspired by, and if we're so lucky to move on and do subsequent seasons, we have all this stuff that we can use or not use, and with the freedom of using things that we think make Teacup better, as opposed to paying lip service to Stinger, you know?

SCIFI VISION:   Right, that's good, though, because that could have been a harder conversation than the first one, I would think, depending how he reacted. [laughs] So, that's good. Does that make it easier, though, having material, or in a way more difficult, because you can't creatively make all the decisions? I'm just curious, as a creative person, if that's a hindrance or not at all, because it limits it somewhat.

IAN McCULLOCH:   I think that it could be a hindrance, but I think that was part of the leap of faith and part of doing such a big swing, meaning a very different adaptation, was that once I did that, I have the freedom now to make the choices that fit with Teacup. I'm not beholden to the book, but the book is there, and I can use that stuff. The idea was, the book is there. Go read the book. It's great. This is not the book. This is something different. Watch this. We think it's great. The two things don't have to be the same thing. So, I don't feel beholden or that I have to check boxes off of Stinger things. There are things there that we can use. It's kind of like the writer's room. Everybody has all these ideas, and we pick and choose the things that we really think work well for the show.

SCIFI VISION:   Was there anything in doing that, because you didn't do, I guess, kind of the outside of that family, that you feel like you would have liked to have put in, that you couldn’t put in just for that reason? Because obviously once you cut that out, you can't just take a little piece of it and randomly insert it.

IAN McCULLOCH:   No, because I think I've been doing this long enough that, you know, I've got a stack of scripts that have never been made, and the idea of letting things go for a while or forever has become par for the course. So, it's curating something, if you will, and picking the things that work. Part of that job is also not using all the stuff that doesn't work. Even if you love it, if it doesn't fit in this particular puzzle piece, then you just, you don't [use it]. You know, life's short. You got to make some choices.

SCIFI VISION:   Talk a bit about casting, because everybody seems to work really well.

IAN McCULLOCH:   Our casting director, Meredith Tucker, is amazing. She is, for my money, the best in the business. It was all about a cast that felt like real people that felt grounded. These are not performers as much as they are actors who can embody people very, very easily. Because as I said earlier, the ball gets rolling very quickly, so you have to be on board with these characters and know who they are very, very quickly before they're just off and doing stuff. And the cast, from Kathy Baker to Chaske [Spencer] to Rob Morgan, Scott [Speedman], all of them, they're just people you believe, and they are honest when they're on screen, and that's what it's about. That's how you get people to care about these characters, and then all this stuff happens to them, and you care about their fate, and you care about their reaction to something, because you believe them, and you feel like you're with them.