Pop culture news for readers: November 11, 2026

Here's how pop culture and literature have been intersecting lately ... 

MOVIES

• Jacob Elordi will play convicted murderer Gary Gilmore in a movie adaptation of The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer and also serve as a producer (Deadline). 

• Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy will star in the movie version of Insomniac City, a memoir by Bill Hayes (The Hollywood Reporter).

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• The movie adaptation of Colin Meloy's novel Wildwood will soon be available in a 4K Ultra HD SteelBook edition (Variety).

TV

• Scott Payne's memoir about his career as an undercover FBI agent, Code Name: Pale Horse, will become a TV series, simply called Pale Horse Deadline).

• The Other Bennet Sister author Janice Hadlow is working on another Jane Austen-inspired novel — The Other Elliot Sister, based on Persuasion's characters — and a TV adaptation of it has already been approved (Deadline). 

OTHER

• Paddington: The Musical, which opens on Broadway next year, has announced its casting (Deadline). 

• Musician Marcus “Bellringer” Bell used Muhammed Ali's favorite poem, "If" by Rudyard Kipling, as an inspiration for a song he wrote for a TV series about the boxer (Deadline). 

• Wicker star Alexander Skarsgard will narrate the story that won a Wicker universe fan-fiction contest for audio erotica app Quinn (The Hollywood Reporter).

• Foundation Books has unveiled the first titles in its adaptation partnership with Macmillan, including an animated short based on Jim Benton's Everybody and a book series inspired by the digital creators Rock Squad's Bloodsuckers universe (The Hollywood Reporter).

• The novel Twenty Thirty by Albert Brooks depicts a future that strongly resembles today's world — weight loss drugs, computer watches, and self-driving vehicles, to name a few features — and fans are now wondering if its Jewish US president is the next prediction to come true (The Hollywood Reporter).