'Defending Jacob' creator Mark Bomback reveals it was originally going to be a film

Creator, producer, and showrunner of Apple TV+ show Defending Jacob Mark Bomback has revealed to Deadline that the show was initially planned as a motion picture.

In Deadline's latest 'Behind the Lens' feature, Pete Hammond sat down with Bomback to discuss the challenges of working in a streaming environment, family, and more:

I recently interviewed him for this virtual edition of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens, when we talked about the challenges and pluses of working in a streaming environment for a project like this. He tells me the original idea was to make Defending Jacob as a motion picture, but that as he got more into it the limited series format seemed ideal to flesh out the story of a assistant DA, played by Chris Evans, whose young son becomes a main suspect in the murder of a student at this school.

Hammond himself noted that Defending Jacob was like "a great page-turner of a book that I couldn't put down". As mentioned, when Bomback first received the idea for Defending Jacob , he says that it was pitched as a film, but after reading it decided that he could do the story much more justice as a series. Hammond also noted the "cinematic quality" of the series and its star-studded line-up.

Defending Jacob is based on a 2012 novel of the same name. According to the show's website:

A gripping, character-driven thriller based on the 2012 New York Times best-selling novel of the same name, and starring Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaeden Martell, Cherry Jones, Pablo Schreiber, Betty Gabriel, and Sakina Jaffrey. The limited drama series unfolds around a shocking crime that rocks a small Massachusetts town and one family in particular, forcing an assistant district attorney to choose between his sworn duty to uphold justice and his unconditional love for his son.

Six episodes of the series are currently available on Apple TV+, the remainder will premiere each Friday.

You can see the full interview here.