If Shelby Van Pelt could go back in time, she would've become a marine biologist. It isn't surprising, seeing as the New York Times Bestselling author based her debut novel on a giant Pacific octopus. Van Pelt's moving book maps the tender relationship between Tova, an elderly aquarium worker and a worldwise Octopus, Marcellus, who wants to live out the last few years of his life out of his tank and in the deep sea.
The book, which captivated more than a million readers on its debut in 2022, is now getting a Netflix adaptation with Sally Field, Lewis Pullman, and Alfred Molina leading the cast, streaming on May 8. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Van Pelt talks to us about writing a charismatic animal in the era of AI slop, her favourite creature feature, and the shared enthusiasm over Doc Oc voicing her dear Octopus.
The book navigates grief so expertly through various characters. Tova is grieving the loss of her son and partner, Cameron struggles with abandonment issues and the sweet Ethan, who lives with loneliness. Was grief a big theme of the book when you started writing it?
I think it just came out as part of the exploration of the characters. I start from a place of “what's sort of keeping them up at night”. And a lot of times, it's the same things that keep me up at night, like, no surprise.
So, for Tova to have lost a child, I think a lot of that came from me being a new mom at the time that I was writing this. And just navigating that anxiety of like, well, what's the worst thing that could happen to me?
Grief in particular is just such a universal human emotion. I mean, it is something that literally everyone experiences at one point or another. And, not just grief as it relates to the death of someone close to you. You can navigate the grief of a life you thought you would have that you're not going to, of a road not taken, of an opportunity lost. Because all of these characters are navigating their own journeys with grief, it became one of those very universal themes in the book.
Tell us about your love for the octopus and their amazing instincts...
I wish I could go back in time and become a marine biologist. It would have been so fitting. But no, I'm like an armchair octopus expert, I guess, if you can even call it that.
I really just became fascinated by watching videos. And this was probably 10 or 12 years ago at this point. So there weren't even as many videos as there are now. YouTube was smaller than it is today. And, thankfully, we didn't back then have like all of the AI videos and all of that sort of slop infiltrating. So, in that simpler time, when you saw a video of an animal doing something cool, that was actually real. It was a time in my life when I was trying to sort of teach myself how to do fiction writing.
I was just thinking of fun voices to write, and thinking these octopuses would have such an interesting interior monologue. You're watching an octopus be sort of frustrated with its circumstances, in captivity, not wanting to do something, and the humans are trying to get it to do something. And you can almost feel the exasperation.
In many ways, the book is so apt for today’s times of increased hate, uncertainty and chaos in the world; it gives people an escape into a world where kindness and whimsy are the greatest currencies, something that all of us could do with. Do you think that’s what makes this a perfect film as well?
Definitely. It’s a book about hope. And I think the film version captures that perfectly. You know, I always like to say, Marcellus's most famous line when he says, “Humans, you know, usually you are dull and blundering, but occasionally you can be remarkably bright creatures.” And I didn't think a whole lot about it when I was writing it; it was just sort of, you know, I thought it was very clever that like, this is, you know, we're going to kind of turn this title around to mean more than one thing.
Like, a lot of times, we're not the greatest species, right? We, there's wars, there's, like, we're destroying the planet, you know, we're awful to each other online, and even in person, sometimes, and like, there's just so much chaos and hate out there. But I feel like what we can take from that line from Marcellus is that, like, occasionally, there are bright spots.
And, you know, you have to let those bright spots be enough to have hope for humans as a species.
Can you take us through how the Netflix adaptation happened?
We got the option sold pretty quickly after the hardcover came out back in 2022. And as I'm sure you know, that's just always the first step in getting a movie made from a book or another source. So we sold the option, and that was really exciting.
But I was kind of like, okay, books get optioned, but most of them don't end up becoming an actual movie. So, it kind of tempered my hopes and a bunch of time passed. We were sort of putting feelers out, but nothing was really happening. We had a big writer's strike over here that lasted almost a year. So everything was at a standstill during that.
It was in 2024 that Netflix came on board. And things moved pretty quickly after that. The movie was filmed in April of 2025 in about a month, which is pretty short. It was a very efficient process, I think, by film standards. And I got to spend a week on set, which was amazing and meet some of the cast and interact with them, and really see how a movie gets made on a day-to-day basis, which was so eye-opening.
The casting for the Netflix adaptation is quite fabulous. Not only is acting legend Sally Field playing Tova, but Dr Octopus (Alfred Molina) is fittingly voicing Marcellus, the octopus!
Marcellus would’ve loved that (laughs). I think the casting is perfect. Sally Field is just an icon in her own right. But aside from that, she also really reminds me of my grandmother, whom I based Tova on. She really captured what I had had in my mind the entire time when I was writing it, which is really incredible when you think about it.
Lewis Pullman is the perfect Cameron; he is sort of just a little bit rumpled, a little bit self-deprecating. I love that Doc Oc is Marcellus! I have to speak to some of the producers and see how intentional that was, because I can't imagine it wasn't, I don't think it was just a coincidence. Alfred Molina brings such a wise yet world-weary voice to Marcellus in the film.
What do you make of the resurgence of book-to-film adaptations this year? With films like Wuthering Heights and Project Hail Mary increasingly taking over internet conversations?
I feel like there have always been a lot of book adaptations, but I think it's really great that there have been so many good ones lately. They have been thoughtfully and well done lately. There's a saying in the book world that the book is always better. Probably mostly that's true. But books are also just a very different experience from a movie. You almost can't compare them in that way.
It takes me probably like eight to 10 hours to read an average-sized novel. I'm not the fastest reader. But you watch a movie in 90 minutes, so it's just gonna be a different experience, no matter what it is. They're their own pieces of art. They're their own works of art. I feel like there have been some really, really good ones lately. And hopefully, Remarkably Bright Creatures will join their ranks.
We all love a good creature feature. What are your favourites?
That's a good question. A lot of the movies that I have watched in the last several years have been kids' movies because my kids are 10 and 12. They’re just now sort of ageing out of the Pixar era. The Zootopia movies. I haven't seen the new one yet. But we just watched the original one. It has a surprisingly complex and sophisticated message at the core, for a kids' movie.