Van Jensen’s debut novel is about a 3-mile-tall alien that hurtles toward Earth and then drops down outside Little Springs, a fictional Nebraska small town.
But the backstory of “Godfall” might be as surreal as the plot.
Jensen’s book, which was released Wednesday, has already generated headlines and excitement because it will be turned into a TV series by director Ron Howard.
The Hollywood Reporter reported last week that Jensen’s book was the subject of a bidding war that featured north of 10 other potential buyers before it was acquired by Imagine, a company started by Howard and Brian Grazer.
Among Imagine’s TV credits are “Friday Night Lights,” “24,” “Parenthood,” “Empire” and “Arrested Development.”
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“It’s so strange. So bizarre,” Jensen said in an interview with The World-Herald. “But also, I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling for a couple weeks.”
The University of Nebraska Press is publishing “Godfall.” Jensen, a Nebraska native, is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jensen was a newspaper crime reporter and a magazine editor before becoming an author of comic books and graphic novels. He also served as a comic book ambassador for the U.S. State Department.
Jensen said he had no expectations about getting “Godfall” turned into a TV series. He thought maybe he’d get one offer and a paltry amount of money for it.
Then one day about five weeks ago, Jensen received a text from his agent: “Buckle up.”
Apparently people in Hollywood were looking for a sci-fi story with a down-to-Earth procedural aspect. That happens to be a pretty good description of “Godfall.”
After the 3-mile-tall alien drops in Little Springs, “the giant” or alien’s presence transforms the town as government officials, the military and scientists descend on the town to study it.
The story follows David Blunt, the sheriff of the town.
“It’s like he grew up dreaming of just being Andy Griffith of his own little Mayberry,” Jensen said.
Blunt is trying to manage what’s happening in his town, but Jensen said he’s completely overmatched. Then the murders start.
People who have read the book are excited about the story, especially in Hollywood. Weeks after shopping the book around, Jensen was doing video calls with big names in the TV and film industry.
“It’s just mind-blowing,” Jensen said. “It’s like the biggest-name people out there, and they’re all pleading their case to me. It’s not me begging them like ‘Hey, please consider this book.’ It’s them saying, ‘Oh we love the book so much. Please, please let us be the ones to turn it into a show.’”
One of those calls was with Howard and Imagine producers, including one from Nebraska.
“It ultimately was like, I can’t say no to Ron Howard,” Jensen said.
Howard has directed movies such as “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Splash,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Willow,” “Cinderella Man” and many others.
“I’m honored to be a part of bringing Van’s incredible story to the screen. He’s built such an expansive, enthralling world that is deeply universal in its themes,” Howard said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Godfall showcases the perseverance of the human experience and the very relevant themes of family and change in small town America. Not to mention, the rich and complicated characters, that provide great performance opportunities and what I know will be an amazing cast.”
Jensen will be an executive producer of the show and do some writing, but he said he’s not precious about the book and knows it will have to be changed and adapted to turn it into a TV show. What really matters to Jensen is not depicting rural America in a stereotypical way.
Jensen is from a town near the bottom of the Nebraska Panhandle called Lewellen. The population of the town hovered around 300 while Jensen was growing up.
Jensen’s high school class had three people in it before the school shut down after his freshman year.
Many of Jensen’s relatives still live in Lewellen.
The Nebraska town in Jensen’s book, Little Springs, is an amalgam of Lewellen and two other nearby towns, Oshkosh and Big Springs. Jensen said there are places in “Godfall” that are specifically drawn from reality, but he also tried to synthesize the experience of growing up in Lewellen and the types of people that live there.
Jensen, who now lives in Atlanta with his family, said after living in big cities and a small town he wanted to write about the urban world and the rural world being forced to try to coexist.
“I feel like I’m sort of split between these two worlds — rural America and urban America,” he said. “I can see both the good and bad and the similarities between those worlds. But when you look at our country I feel like there’s this huge urban–rural split, and the sides just don’t interact. They don’t talk to each other.”
When asked why he thought Hollywood was looking for a story like “Godfall” at this moment, Jensen said there’s something that feels “very apocalyptic” about recent current events.
“We have multiple places where a world war could erupt. We have a climate crisis. We’re just coming out of this horrible pandemic. All the political stuff is so fraught and so ugly,” Jensen said. “I think people kind of feel like these giant unfathomable things get dropped in our lives all the time. Maybe it’s a way you can sort of think about it in abstract terms if it’s part of a story or deal with the emotions of it.”
Jensen said that in the past few years there has been a feeling of an unexploded bomb hanging over everyone’s heads, and the wanted to capture that in his book. After the immediate threat diminishes, life has to go on.
“As much as there’s crime and there’s scary stuff in ‘Godfall,’ I think it also has a lot of heart in it. At least that’s my intention,” Jensen said. “I always want to write books that even if they have hard or ugly things in them that they have some inspiration and that they are ultimately hopeful and optimistic.”
Jensen’s book can be found wherever books are sold. He will be in Lincoln on Saturday at 4:30 for a book launch at Francie & Finch, 130 S. 13th St.
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