Maine authors are no strangers to the big screen — or the little screen for that matter.

Stephen King has had dozens of his books and stories made into movies or TV series. Richard Russo’s Pulitizer Prize-winning “Empire Falls” was made into an HBO miniseries, as was “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout, which also won the Pulitzer Prize. Both were Maine-set stories.

So who’s next? Here’s a look at the status of the development deals for four Maine authors, announced over the last few years.

RON CURRIE

Currie’s novel “The Noble, Savage Death of Babs Dionne” was released in March 2025, and within a few months it was announced that Netflix wanted to develop a series. The novel is set in Currie’s native Waterville and focuses on a female Franco-American crime boss, fiercely proud of her heritage. The process has moved fairly quickly, and the writing of the proposed series began in June.

Currie, who lives in Portland, has moved to Los Angeles temporarily to work on it as head writer. Currie said he plans to be there through the summer and he hopes to find out by then if Netflix will give the series final approval, so it can be cast and shot. When or where that might be has yet to be announced.

TESS GERRITSEN

Gerritsen’s Maine-set thriller came out in the fall of 2023 and about a year later a series development deal was announced, with Amazon MGM Studios. Gerritsen, who lives in Camden, said that writers have been hired and scripts have been written. Jenny Klein, a producer and writer for the Amazon series “Daisy Jones & The Six,” has signed on with the series. Gerritsen said she’s gotten occasional Zoom calls from the show’s production team and has talked with Klein. But she hasn’t heard much about the series’ progress in the past six months or so.

The book is focused on a retired CIA operative living in small-town Maine whose past catches up with her. Gerritsen’s long-running novel series about Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, a detective and medical examiner working together, was the basis of a series on TNT called “Rizzoli & Isles” that ran from 2010 to 2016.

TRAVIS KENNEDY

Even before Kennedy’s debut novel, “The Whyte Python World Tour,” went on sale in June of 2025, Paramount Pictures announced it was developing a film based on it. At the time, two of the filmmakers named on the project were director and writer Jonathan Goldstein and actor and director John Francis Daley. Goldstein directed the films “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (2023) and “Game Night” (2018) and was a writer on “The Flash” (2023). Daley was also a writer on “The Flash” and “Dungeons & Dragons.”

Kennedy, who lives in Scarborough, says the film is still in development, though he can’t disclose any new details yet.

“The good thing about it taking so long is that everyone involved has been committed to telling the story in the best possible way,” Kennedy said.

ADAM WHITE

White’s novel “The Midcoast,” came out in the summer of 2022 and by March of the following year it was being developed for a possible series on Hulu. But since then, the project was taken over by FX, also owned by Disney, and FX decided not to make the series, White said. Because there had been a bidding war for the book rights originally, he’s optimistic someone else will be interested in bringing it to the small screen.

White, who lives in Exeter, New Hampshire, but grew up in Damariscotta, has decided to shop the book around again, but this time with himself attached as the project’s writer. “The Midcoast” is set in Damariscotta and focuses on Ed Thatch, a lobsterman-turned-drug-runner who has become the richest man in town and is obsessed with giving his wife the opulent lifestyle he thinks she deserves.