Run-A-Muck Develops Feature Adaptation of Torrey Peters' Pulitzer Finalist Novella 'Stag Dance'
Run-A-Muck is developing a feature film adaptation of Torrey Peters' novella Stag Dance, with Kristen Stewart producing and Trevor Adley attached to produce, according to Deadline and The New York Times.
The novella is the title story from Stag Dance: A Quartet, published by Penguin Random House and named a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Peters described it as a genre-defying psychological thriller set in an isolated illegal logging camp, where a winter dance ignites a volatile chain of obsession, jealousy, desire, and betrayal. The central character is Babe Bunyan, a towering, enigmatic axman.
Run-A-Muck, a creator-led media company founded by Pamela Drucker Mann, Ilene Chaiken, and Jennifer Beals, announced the project as its second feature. The search for a writer and director is currently underway. Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Ilene Chaiken called the adaptation a chance to bring "this incredible story to the screen" in a statement to Deadline. Pamela Drucker Mann previously compared the material to The Revenant in an interview with The New York Times. Peters herself praised Run-A-Muck's "blood-pumping, pulpy, thriller vision" for the adaptation.
The novella carries serious literary weight. Stag Dance: A Quartet is Peters' follow-up to Detransition, Baby, a novel that won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A separate feature adaptation of Detransition, Baby is also in the works: Tommy Dorfman's Good Girl Productions secured the rights in 2025, as first reported by Deadline.
Peters wrote Stag Dance over a ten-year period during which, as she has described, her own views on gender were changing. The New York Times reviewed the book in March 2025, describing it as probing the complicated, evolving realities of queerness and trans life. Publishers Weekly hailed the title novella as "Electrifying" and "funny yet heart-wrenching."
Run-A-Muck's first announced feature is Courtside, a romantic comedy set in the world of professional women's basketball featuring WNBA players Gabby Williams, Theresa Plaisance, and Syd Colson. Beyond these two films, the company has more than 20 scripted and unscripted projects in development spanning film, television, digital series, podcasts, and live experiences. Peters is represented by UTA, Myman Greenspan Fox, and Neon Literary.
For a company still building out its feature slate, landing a Pulitzer finalist with an Oscar-nominated producer attached signals clear intent. Whether Stag Dance reaches screens as a spare wilderness thriller or something wilder depends on whoever takes the writing and directing chairs — jobs that, for now, remain unfilled.
