WOLF PACK, the first of a young adult fantasy book series by award-winning Brampton writer and York University alumnus, Edo van Belkom, has been turned into a TV series by Paramount Plus, starring Sarah Michelle Geller.
Belkom holds an honours BA in creative writing from York and started his career as a writer for Excalibur as the sports editor in the early 1980s. He also met his wife of over 35 years, Roberta, through Excalibur when she was filling the role of photo editor. While he has since worked as a sports reporter at the Brampton Times and Cambridge Reporter, as well as police reporting at the North York Mirror, he has always been dedicated to fiction.
“In 1989, I sold my first story to Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature at East Tennessee State University. That story was reprinted in Year’s Best Horror Stories XX and my fiction career was off to a great start. But selling fiction never got easy and I spent years writing stories and novels that were rejected and accepted at rates I thought should be reversed, but I persevered,” says Belkom.
Belkom wrote the first WOLF PACK novel in 2004, highlighting the first won the Aurora and Silver Birch awards. The author began work on the next three books, Lone Wolf, Cry Wolf, and Wolf Man.
“None of them enjoyed the success of the first one. So, by 2010 all four books were out of print and I was on to other things, until late 2021 when someone expressed interest in the film and television rights to the book,” says Belkom.
The series began production in Atlanta in June 2022 and premiered on Paramount Plus on Jan. 26. The first season will have a total of eight episodes, which become available every Thursday until April.
“On Jan. 19, my wife and I were in Los Angeles for the official premiere of the series and we were able to walk the red carpet and feel like Hollywood stars for a night. Now back home in Brampton, we’re doing something on a much smaller scale, hosting a hometown screening at the Cyril Clark Library Theatre,” says Belkom.
The screening at Cyril Clark Library Theatre will be Sunday, Feb. 5 at 2 pm with net proceeds going to a couple of wildlife rescue sanctuaries in Northern Ontario.
“It’s an intimate venue and I’ll be reading the prologue that opens the book series and plays an important part in the TV show,” says Belkom. “Then, we’ll show the first episode, followed by a talk by me, explaining the unlikely journey that a young adult novel published in Canada ended up taking to become the basis for a TV series from a major Hollywood studio — and starring none other than Sarah Michelle Gellar.”
To learn more about this event, click here or call the box office at 905-874-2800.
