‘Dark Matter’ showrunner Blake Crouch on expanding his novel and juggling 30 Joel Edgertons

Juggling multiple alternate realities isn’t easy for “Dark Matter” creator and showrunner Blake Crouch and his creative team. “Our script coordinator is kept very, very busy with the sheer number of documents it takes to track, not just the worlds, but the clothing across characters,” he explains, “because one of the challenges you have when you’re creating a thing where there’s 30 versions of Joel Edgerton is how do you tell the story of each one?” We talked to Crouch as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV showrunners panel. Watch our complete video interview above.

Streaming on Apple TV+, “Dark Matter” stars Edgerton as Jason Dessen, a college physics professor who is abducted one night and finds himself in an alternate reality. From there, he fights to return home before another version of himself takes over his family. The film is based on Crouch’s own 2016 novel. “What I think would be incredibly challenging would be to create a work in screenplay form out of nothing,” he says, having previously worked on TV adaptations of his “Wayward Pines” and “Good Behavior” novels.

But there were differences between the book and the adaptation that introduced new complications to the storytelling. “The book is this very tight single-player POV of Jason Dessen trying to get home,” Crouch points out. “And I knew that I wanted to really incorporate Daniella Dessen’s POV as she’s living with this imposter who looks exactly like her husband, but is behaving weirdly, to say the least. And figuring out what those moments were was challenging, but also, frankly, some of the most fun aspects of the show.”

“Dark Matter” has been renewed for a second season, and “we’re just going to follow the characters where they take us. And I think we left all of our main cast in really interesting moments. We’re excited to follow them along, and there’s some big surprises to come.”