‘After’ Author Anna Todd Talks Franchise’s 10th Anniversary, Adapting Her Books for Film — and Colleen Hoover’s, Too (2024)

What comes after “After”? That’s what author Anna Todd has been thinking about a lot lately amid the 10th anniversary of the debut of her popular romance book series. When “After” launched on Oct. 21, 2014, Todd was a newcomer to the formal publishing industry and had gotten her start as a Wattpad writer, where she gained a mass following of readers interested in the love saga she penned about Tessa and Hardin.

Ten years, five books, 12 million copies sold worldwide, multiple film adaptations and several graphic novels later, and Todd has now moved on from the “After” franchise to other works, including her “Brightest Stars”trilogy and “The Spring Girls.” She’s also launched her own production company, Frayed Pages Media, in that time and struck a deal for her own imprint with Wattpad.

But the glow of “After” hasn’t worn off Todd yet and in honor of the 10th anniversary, the author spoke at length with Variety about her first hit and where things go from here, including her Hollywood work on screen adaptations of her own projects and fellow author Colleen Hoover‘s “Regretting You.”

What are you feeling right now surrounding the 10th anniversary of “After”?

I mean, it’s very nostalgic. We start edtalking about this when we were talking about doing a revamp of the book and a new cover, and there was almost a disconnected timeline in my head where I was like, yeah, 10-year anniversary. But talking to a bunch of publishers is not the same thing as talking to my readership about it. So then, as it got closer and closer — I still get messages of new readers telling me about how they found the story and stuff — I started getting so many more throwback messages and comments of, “I remember the first day I read this. And I was 15, and now I’m 25 and I graduated college.” And I’m like, wow, it’s very nostalgic. And I even think about who I was when I wrote that, and how different my life is, and it feels like I was a kid when I wrote that in my 20s.

Looking back now that you’ve completed that series, is there anything you would do differently in “After” with hindsight?

I might scope for what I know about the world. I think we all should be able to write and read what we want, but 2014 me definitely wasn’t as tapped into what I believe and what I feel as a 35-year-old woman. I think people can write and read whatever they want, but for me personally, I don’t think I would necessarily have made Hardin’s character softer, because that is the point of writing really flawed characters. But there are a couple things like Tess’s friendships. I really wish I would have been more aware of female friendships. I never really had any until later in life. So there’s things like that that I feel like kind of date the series. But overall, I think people loved it for a reason. And, you know, it was 10 years ago, so I think we were all reading and writing very differently, but I’m still very proud of it. There are times where I’m like, I definitely would change Tess’s reaction to certain things and even though she was definitely sassy, I would have had her 100% put him in his place.

How have you seen the producing part of your career evolve since publishing “After” and the first film adaptation?

So I kind of got thrown into producing on the first one, which I’m very, very lucky every day for that. And then because I’m 100% or zero, I just have no concept of the middle ground, I started being like, OK, if I’m a producer, I want to produce, I don’t want to just sit here and post on social media and say I’m producing the movie. I want to learn about behind-the-scenes things. I want to know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t want to just be an extra body sitting in Atlanta. So first of all, before we even got to Atlanta, there was a lot of casting, which, of course, they wanted my opinion on from a fan point of view. I think as women, sometimes we don’t want to praise ourselves. I’m still struggling with that a little. I had all these gut instincts, I felt so strongly about this. And it was strange because none of the people initially that we were casting– like fans ended up loving them, but in the beginning it was like, “What are you talking about?” But I’m like, “You guys just trust me, please.” And then they were all happy in the end.

I just had all these gut instincts about certain scenes. I remember being like, how wild would it be if I suggested that we change the position of the camera. One of the producers, who’s been producing for 25 years, is a close friend of mine, and we’ve been through all this together. And she was like, “I mean, it’s not really normal, but you can try it.” And then it ended up being this pattern of, not every time, but often when they would listen to me in a real way, things would work, and everyone was like, “Oh, it’s great.” And I started getting that rush of like, this is why it’s so fun to create something. I just love creating stuff, and I love the medium of watching it, even if it weren’t my own adaptation, even doing others. But I love being a part of the creative part.

How does that work for something like Colleen Hoover’s “Regretting You,” where it’s not your work, but you are producing and helping to adapt it?

Honestly, it’s been so fun. I really, really enjoy it. With the “After” series in particular, and hopefully with others — I’ve sold two of my other projects to other people, I can’t say who — but with this one, it was different. This is a long-term plan of mine is to make more authors’ work. But this was my first one that wasn’t mine, and even though Colleen Hoover, as an author, has a massive, massive fan base — there are certain series where the writers room has to be exactly like they read it — and fortunately, Colleen’s fan base is so forgiving of that kind of stuff, it’s more about keeping the essence of the story. So we didn’t have tattoos or any of these very specific things. So I got to just think of it as, how can we serve the romance community and make a good film? And since I was the original person to purchase the rights, I have a lot of say, but I also have a very experienced team with me, like Brunson Green, for example, who’s been a producer for 20 years. He’s incredible, and he’s a great mentor. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, because it’s a lot of work, it’s a full time job, but it’s definitely creatively so fun watching pages come to life. And as a reader and as a writer and as just a really creative person, it’s been so fun casting and having that pressure of what exactly people like need as the character. It’s just really, really fulfilling.

Are you interested in adapting for TV as well as film?

I am. I will say one of my adaptations, as of now, would be a TV project, and that will be a whole other ballgame. It’s definitely different. Probably because I’ve only worked on features so far, I definitely am more of a feature girl. But if we make this series even 50% as good as it is in my head, I will be very excited about it. It’s definitely different but I’m always down to learn.

This interview has been edited and condensed.