HAPPY! AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION
First Published on Denofgeek.com
AS HAPPY! SEASON 2 NEARS ITS FINALE, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER PATRICK MACMANUS SPOKE ABOUT ADAPTING THE COMIC AND TAKING ON VONNEGUT NEXT.
Patrick Macmanus serves as executive producer on SYFY’s Happy!, but he gives the bulk of the credit for the show’s quirky dark comedy to co-creators Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor. However, with Macmanus steering the ship through two seasons, Universal Content Productions (UCP) decided to give him an exclusive overall deal to develop other properties for distribution on television. Macmanus spoke to us about the evolution of Happy! beyond its original source material and how his upcoming adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five presented a particular challenge moving forward.
As Happy! prepares to wrap up its second season on May 29, 2019, Macmanus reflected on Taylor and Morrison’s choice to make season 1 centered around Christmas and season 2 around Easter. “From the very beginning when I got involved with it, they had said that they wanted each season to revolve around a different holiday,” he said. “The fact that it’s about Easter wasn’t just because we were trying to pick one of the more boring holidays that’s out there and trying to figure out a way of distorting and destroying it. We also felt like it spoke a lot to Nick Sax’s journey. If season 1 was about him finding that he has a family and he actually has a reason to live, it made a lot of sense for us to try to figure out a way to resurrect Nick and have him attempt to find new life… We found it extraordinarily helpful to look at season 2 as a form of resurrection for all of our characters.”