'The Hunger Games' screenwriter Billy Ray wrote a YA novel. He has his sights set on a movie trilogy

Billy Ray is terrified.

Or astatine slightest that’s what the award-winning screenwriter says successful effect to the innocuous-to-the-point-of-pitiful interview-opener: “How are you doing?”

Strangely, helium is not referring to the authorities of our state (though helium has been scathingly captious of some the Trump medication and the Democratic Party) oregon the imaginable perils of artificial quality (which helium precocious described to The Times arsenic “a crab masquerading arsenic a nett center”) oregon adjacent the authorities of the container bureau successful Hollywood’s caller property of contraction (Ray famously wrote the now-iconic, pro-cinema Nicole-Kidman-in-a-sparkly-pantsuit advertisement for AMC.)

No, Ray is terrified due to the fact that his archetypal novel, a YA dystopian instrumentality connected “Romeo and Juliet” called “Burn the Water,” is astir to travel out. And though helium knows what it’s similar erstwhile a movie underperforms, this feels precise different.

“If you’re a screenwriter and you constitute a movie and for immoderate crushed radical don’t come,” helium said amid the clatter and speech successful a West Hollywood java shop, “you tin fell down the director, you tin fell down the cast, you tin fell down each kinds of things. But if you constitute a publication and cipher buys it, there’s cipher to fell behind.”

(Scholastic Press)

In “Burn the Water,” Ray imagines London successful 2425, astir 300 years aft the polar crystal caps person collapsed, flooding astir of the satellite successful a cataclysmic event. In the turmoil that followed “the Great Soak” of 2100, a biologic limb was acceptable disconnected successful London, further decimating its colonisation by nervus state and creating 2 warrior houses known arsenic the Rogues and the Crowns.

The Rogues and the Crowns went connected to prosecute successful 3 centuries of warfare implicit the half-submerged city’s dwindling resources. (The unaffiliated masses, known arsenic the Habs, bash astir of the labor.) Predictably, beingness expectancy shortened dramatically, truthful galore of the warriors and their captains are teenagers and children. Including Jule, ace combatant for the Crowns, and Rafe, her counterpart for the Rogues, who we conscionable successful the book’s opening pages and rapidly go the star-crossed lovers of the story.

Propulsive and cinematic, “Burn the Water” cries retired for a movie adaptation, which isn’t astonishing since Ray is simply a screenwriter and the bones of the communicative began arsenic a movie. Fifteen years ago, helium said, helium heard that Greg Silverman, past caput of Warner Bros., was looking for a caller rotation connected “Romeo and Juliet.” “So I thought, ‘OK, what if I bash “Romeo and Juliet” successful the future; what would that look like?’”

As often happens successful Hollywood, it turned retired that this is not what Silverman had wanted astatine all, but Ray had go attached to his thought and truthful it sat connected the backmost support of his mind, archetypal arsenic a feature, past arsenic a bid and, finally, a novel.

When the Writers Guild of America went connected onslaught 2 years ago, helium thought, “If I don’t constitute a caller now, I ne'er will.”

So helium did. While besides hosting a Deadline-sponsored podcast called “Strike Talk,” Ray spent the sixth months betwixt erstwhile the WGA onslaught began (May 2, 2023) and the overlapping SAG-AFTRA onslaught ended (Nov. 9) learning however to constitute a novel.

Which, arsenic it turns out, is precise antithetic from adapting one.

“I was feeling specified impostor syndrome,” helium said. “I knew I was a screenwriter but I didn’t deliberation I was a novelist.”

He acceptable it successful London for reasons topographical — ”I needed a metropolis that was connected an land truthful it would beryllium wholly chopped off” — and historical — ”in homage to Shakespeare.”

That homage did not widen to agelong soliloquy; “Burn the Water” is intentionally economical. Indeed, Ray’s archetypal draught was “very thin — I was truthful acrophobic of boring people, of seeming pretentious.” When helium showed it to readers helium trusted, they told him, “‘This isn’t a novel, it’s a screenplay successful prose.’ They said, ‘You person to recognize that successful a novel, you’re the camera, you’re the actors’ faces, you’re the accumulation designer.’”

So helium wrote different draught that was 50% longer and much descriptive. And portion helium hadn’t intended to constitute a YA novel, helium realized that by making his characters a fewer years younger than helium had initially conceived them, helium could scope a younger audience.

“I yet wanted it to beryllium a acquisition to young people, young women specifically, astir leadership,” helium said. “I’ve spent truthful overmuch clip successful the governmental abstraction and a batch of what we speech astir is young radical feeling truthful disenfranchised and truthful disempowered; they don’t cognize what to do. And I privation them to cognize they person the enactment of leading.”

By “political space,” Ray is referring to the information that for astir 10 years, helium has served arsenic thing of a communications advisor for the Democrat Party. “When Trump was elected the archetypal time, I knew I had to bash thing beyond penning checks,” helium said. That thing includes writing, oregon helping to write, speeches and run ads and much mostly advising elected officials and candidates astir “how to dependable little similar a Democrat” successful bid to entreaty to voters successful the center. He is presently moving with 80 sitting members of the House and Senate and different 60 candidates.

“Stop excluding radical from the party,” Billy Ray tells Democrats. “Wanting unafraid borders does not marque you a racist. Owning a weapon does not marque you a schoolhouse shooter. Being unsure astir vaccines doesn’t marque you a flat-Earther.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“Americans are not really divided,” helium has said earlier and repeats now. “A bulk hold with the Democratic presumption connected termination rights, minimum wage, healthcare, outgo of surviving and clime change.”

But the party, helium said, has go truthful acrophobic of offending idiosyncratic that it spends much clip arguing implicit pronoun usage than it does implicit the information that “in 1960, the mean property of a first-time homeowner was 23; present it’s 40. Talk astir that. Stop excluding radical from the party. Wanting unafraid borders does not marque you a racist. Owning a weapon does not marque you a schoolhouse shooter. Being unsure astir vaccines doesn’t marque you a flat-Earther.”

What Ray perceives arsenic unexamined reasoning and entrenched prejudice is, on with a wide informing astir clime change, precise contiguous successful “Burn the Water.” Still raging 300 years aft the lawsuit that initially provoked it, the warfare betwixt the Crowns and the Rogues is fundamentally meaningless; it has go a self-sustaining rhythm of unit based astir wholly connected clan identity. Having been raised to hatred the opposing broadside simply due to the fact that they are the opposing side, Rafe and Jule initially cannot judge that their emotion is possible, overmuch little sustainable.

“It is simply a governmental book,” Ray said, but helium was striving for an adjacent equilibrium of love, unit and politics. “When radical work it, I would inquire 3 questions: ‘Were you ever bored? Were you ever confused? Do you deliberation [those things] are balanced?’”

Beyond “The Hunger Games,” and the upcoming prequel “The Hunger Games: Sunrise connected the Reaping,” Ray has not work overmuch YA fiction. When helium was asked to accommodate “The Hunger Games,” helium didn’t cognize what it was. “I asked my kids — my girl was 14, my lad was 9 — and they looked astatine maine arsenic if I had stepped disconnected the Mayflower.”

Unlike astir first-time YA novelists, however, helium was capable to “send an aboriginal draught to Suzanne [Collins, writer of ‘The Hunger Game’ series] and she was hugely helpful.”

“Romeo and Juliet” is, successful galore ways, a YA play, and emotion that indispensable flooded socially inflicted obstacles (including of the interspecies variety) fuels overmuch of the genre, arsenic bash worlds ravaged and divided by futuristic visions of existent realities taken to their extremes. Ray says helium chose apocalypse by h2o due to the fact that it is the astir apt effect of an unchecked clime crisis, but the existent villain of the portion is tribalism — the Rogues and the Crowns would alternatively marque a atrocious concern worse by sidesplitting each different than unify successful an effort to lick larger problems.

Even with his ironclad penning credentials, which includes an Oscar information for “Captain Phillips,” helium seems genuinely amazed that helium landed a lucrative two-book woody with Scholastic; he’s already written the 2nd successful what helium hopes volition beryllium a trilogy.

“We’ll person to spot however this 1 does.”

If it does well, helium would similar to spot a trilogy of films arsenic well.

Not TV?

“Maybe,” helium said. “But I privation to bash immoderate I tin to assistance movies.”

After all, arsenic a much modern maestro than Shakespeare erstwhile wrote: “Heartbreak feels bully successful a spot similar this.”