The Adaptation Journey: The Bering
How to go from a torn-out article, to a podcast... to a limited series on television
This is part of Inside the Tent, a series going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning podcasts.
The Bering is available now to Audible subscribers, with a free sample available to everyone.
The Bering is an Audible Original produced by Campside Media.
The goal of this behind-the-scenes series (from Campside co-founder Adam Hoff) is to pull back the curtain so you can see what happens from the creation of the intellectual property, the “IP” – to something reaching the screen. Whether you pine for your favorite podcast (or book, or article, or sand sculpture) to become a TV series or movie, or you just find yourself curious about the process, it can help to demystify what goes on “off screen.”
In each edition of “The Adaptation Journey,” I will attempt to shine a light on a new part of the process. How studios work and how they have changed over the years … the challenge of adapting true stories into scripted entertainment … what “life rights” actually means … and why Cameron Crowe should have okayed my Jerry McGuire sequel.
There’s so much of the mystical world of Hollywood that can be better understood through the prism of Campside projects. For today, I simply want to examine the concept of time.
When I was in law school, I used to tear my favorite magazine articles out of GQ, Esquire, and Vanity Fair and put them in plastic sheets inside of a three-ring binder. Obviously, this binder was meant to be used for actual course notes, but for me it was a chance to save my favorite stories that I hoped to one day turn into movies. This was a time before streaming services and prestige limited series or even robust online magazine archives. So torn-out articles and cinema dreams it was, even if it sounds like I’m writing about a time 50 years ago.
It wasn’t 50 years ago, but it was 16. That’s how long it has been since I’ve wanted to make “The Longest Night” (aka “The Bering”) into a movie – long enough that a “movie” can now be a limited series, but the texture and feel of a cinematic experience remains in my mind’s eyer. Originally a GQ article by the award-winning journalist Sean Flynn, it tells the incredible true story of one of the largest and most dangerous deep-sea rescues in the history of the Coast Guard. Even as I was putting in the legwork required to be a corporate lawyer, I knew I was going to make this into a film. One day.
We can skip over the years when the rights were not available (under option for a long time at Paramount) and the ones where I couldn’t sell a movie that shot “on water” and fast-forward to 2020, when Sean entrusted us with the rights to “The Longest Night” and it became “The Bering,” a Campside-produced Audible Original podcast.
In addition to anecdotal evidence that this was one of our most beloved productions, “The Bering” also garnered almost all 5-star reviews and was nominated for several awards, including Best Production and Sound Design by the Podcast Academy Awards (aka “The Ambies”). Sean was able to get all the key sources to come back as he weaved their stories together and discovered that he was not only an elite writer, but also an elite podcast narrator. The whole thing was executed with top-flight production from Campside’s Lindsey Kilbride, Ashleyanne Krigbaum, and Abukar Adan, and brought to life with skillful sound design by Shani Aviram.
It was truly one of the most thrilling experiences I have had as a producer to see “The Bering” enter the world of audio and be so loved by so many people. But as it pertains to that original journey – of bringing this story to the screen – it was not the end, but the middle.
—
16 years is a long time. It feels like an eternity since I tore that article out and it still feels like it might be an eternity before it hits a screen, despite everything more or less going perfectly according to plan. Our investor SISTER is a top-tier studio that had identified “The Longest Night” (as it was still known then) on our first list of concepts that we sold upon formation of the company – and we made sure to feed that interest by giving them early cuts of the podcast and working to make sure it hit the radar of SISTER’s Carolyn Strauss (revered producer of shows such as “Game of Thrones,” “Chernobyl,” and “The Last of Us”).
This all paid off not only in the form of an email from Carolyn that said “you guys landed the chopper” (which I may or may not have framed), but, crucially, in an option agreement from our sister studio (no pun intended) to develop the podcast into a limited series.
From there, even before the podcast had been released on Audible, SISTER presented the podcast to a key partner, the acclaimed filmmaker Tobias Lindholm (The Investigation), who they had under an overall talent deal. In a thrilling development, Tobias loved it and came on to direct, which then led to Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright and screenwriter Howard Korder coming onto write. As of today, Howard is finishing the final draft of a pilot script that everyone likes. Multiple networks have said they are “going to want it.” So at this point … what could go wrong?
In the television and film industry, as this series will explore, anything and everything can go wrong. And it probably will, which is why so many people give up entirely. But there’s a flip side to things like “development hell” and “nobody knows anything” and other Hollywood staples, which is that great stories never die. Whether it is Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” being made into a limited series a full 19 years after publication or screenwriter Craig Borten fighting for 21 years to get “Dallas Buyers Club” onto the screen, Hollywood has countless examples of truly durable – truly great – stories finding a way.
And perhaps it is true that there aren’t as many of those examples of success as there are cautionary tales, but it’s also true that there aren’t as many genuinely amazing stories either. And the privilege of producing the adaptations of our Campside shows is that these stories are, in fact, amazing. And many of them are going to find a way – we just have to embrace the journey.
Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.
Adam