A24 Options TV Rights to Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding and The Brightness

A24 has optioned the television rights to Chad Harbach's novels The Art of Fielding and The Brightness, according to The Hollywood Reporter, published on 27 October 2026.

An option is a deal that lets a company develop a book or script into a screen project, usually for a set period. It does not mean a series has been ordered, and it does not guarantee that anything will be made. Plenty of optioned books never reach a screen.

This one has a clear shape already. The Brightness is the sequel to The Art of Fielding, and it is published by Little, Brown and Company. The two books would form the basis of the planned series.

Sean Durkin will showrun and direct the series. A showrunner is the person who runs the creative side of a show day to day, overseeing the writers and the look of the episodes. Durkin will share executive producer credits with Chad Harbach, Jordan Tappis and Beau Willimon. Executive producers are usually the senior names attached to a project, often bringing in money, people or ideas.

The series will be produced by Westward. Tappis and Willimon are its co-founders. A production company is the firm that organises the making of a show, hiring the crew and handling the budget. Westward's involvement means the project has a producing base before any broadcaster or streaming service is named.

For the people behind it, the next stage is development. That means writers working on scripts, and producers deciding how a long novel can be shaped into episodes. Many projects spend months or years here before a decision on whether to go into production is made.

For readers who know the books, the news is that the story now has a home in television development. For everyone else, it is a reminder of how often a novel's path to the screen starts with a quiet rights deal like this one. What comes next depends on the scripts, and on whoever eventually decides to pay for them.