By Rebekah Edwards

Someone asked Ridley Scott about the online backlash to a book change in The Dog Stars — and his answer, printed in full by Empire Magazine, was two words long. This is a family website, so you’ll have to imagine them. The first one starts with F. The second one is “off.”

The change in question? The dog. Of course, it’s the dog. Jasper, a Blue Heeler in Peter Heller’s novel, is a Belgian Malinois in the movie. The internet had feelings (what a surprising and rare development!). Sir Ridley, age 88, had exactly two words for those feelings.

The movie hits theaters August 28. Our full episode (all four of us, the book, the film, and at least one argument about dog breeds) drops September 17. Until then: everything we’re expecting Scott to change from the book, with sources where they exist, and a public grading of our own predictions once we’ve seen it. That’s the deal we made with ourselves. (We did this whole exercise for Project Hail Mary — except that film had already released, so we got to skip straight to the answers.)

Book spoilers from here down. Including the parts with the dog. You’ve been warned twice now. Please do not blame me for future bad decisions.

What we actually know

Jacob Elordi is Hig, the grieving pilot. Josh Brolin is Bangley, the neighbor with a perimeter and opinions about it. Margaret Qualley is Cima; Guy Pearce is her father. Allison Janney and Benedict Wong are in roles nobody will confirm… hold that thought, it matters.

Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) wrote the screenplay, 20th Century Studios is releasing, and the film moved from March to the end of August (usually a recipe for something… shall we say, interesting?).

Director Ridley Scott has promised “drama, fear, terror”… three words the book technically contains, wrapped in about two hundred pages of trout streams and grief.

Which brings us to the predictions.

1. The dog discourse is a decoy. The real question is when?

Jacob Elordi as Hig sitting beside Jasper the Belgian Malinois — Jasper, controversially Belgian. Image: 20th Century Studios

Everyone’s arguing about the breed. Nobody’s asking the question book readers actually care about: Does the movie keep what happens to Jasper, and does it happen where the book puts it?

Heller buries that moment mid-story and lets Hig carry it for the whole back half; it’s the engine of the entire book. Movies love relocating exactly this kind of beat to the end of act two. Our prediction: it stays, it moves later, and it will be engineered to destroy you. Scott’s two-word answer tells us he reserves the right to do whatever he wants with that dog.

(On a very personal note, we absolutely wouldn’t have scheduled this episode had we realized we were about to lose Molly, the podcast’s remaining mascot pup, just before we all start reading this. We have regrets.)

2. The book’s voice can’t survive. Expect voiceover, and expect it sparse.

Jacob Elordi as Hig in The Dog Stars — Image: 20th Century Studios

Heller writes in fragments. Half-sentences. Grief with the punctuation knocked out. That prose IS the book, and it is unfilmable as written. (I am mid-read right now, and let me tell you that you can just feel the grief oozing in those weird half-written parts. If the quiet-apocalypse shelf is your shelf, our Annihilation episode is waiting.)

With the writer of The Revenant on script duty, we’re predicting minimal, weathered voiceover (likely in the form of Hig narrating like a man out of practice at talking) rather than a faithful attempt at the book’s interiority. If the trailer’s tone holds, silence will do the heavy lifting.

If you’ve listened to our episodes at all, you know this is something liable to make at least two of us get bored really fast. Look, we’re not claiming to be professional critics, here…

3. Janney and Wong mean the world got bigger.

Josh Brolin as Bangley sighting through a rifle scope — Bangley, holding the perimeter. Image: 20th Century Studios

Here’s the thing: The book is basically four people and a dog. There are no roles left for Allison Janney and Benedict Wong, so those characters are inventions or expansions.

Combine that with “drama, fear, terror” and a late-August action-window release, and our prediction is a scaled-up threat. The book’s scattered intruders consolidate into an organized antagonist force, and the airport siege beats turn into real set pieces.

According to Donna (Mom), Benedict Wong can do no wrong. She’ll be happy with it either way. 🤷🏻‍♀️

4. Cima arrives early.

Margaret Qualley and Jacob Elordi beside a campfire in The Dog Stars — Image: 20th Century Studios

The novel spends its first long stretch in solitude, quietly reflecting on Hig, Bangley, the dog, the perimeter, and the grief.

Margaret Qualley is all over the marketing. Studios do not cast Margaret Qualley to appear at minute 70. We predict the structure gets rebalanced so the Cima storyline starts sooner and carries more of the middle, and the romance gets more screen time than page time.

5. The ending adds a decision.

Hig leaning against his Cessna in The Dog Stars — The Beast. Image: 20th Century Studios

The book ends quietly, ambiguously, with something like hope that refuses to commit itself. Scott does not traffic in refusing to commit.

Prediction: the film keeps the melancholy but commits to something more definitive, with an ending you can describe in one sentence, which is exactly what the book declines to give you. Whether that’s a mercy or a loss is going to be Josiah’s hill to die on. (He’s determined to love vague and unclear endings.)

6. Colorado, by way of Italy.

Hig crossing a vast green valley in The Dog Stars — Colorado (via Italy). Image: 20th Century Studios

The film was shot in Italy (Cansiglio, Avezzano, Cinecittà), standing in for post-pandemic Colorado. Scott’s landscapes are always characters, so expect the book’s specific Front Range geography to be traded for something grander and stranger.

Fly-fishing purists (the book has many; Heller is one) should brace accordingly.

What the movie can’t change (without a reader riot)

Josh Brolin and Jacob Elordi in a field in The Dog Stars — The odd couple the book is built on. Image: 20th Century Studios

The flu. The plane. The perimeter arrangement with Bangley. The book’s whole moral argument lives in that odd-couple detente. Hig’s grief is the engine. And a dog named Jasper, whatever he looks like now. Everything else is negotiable, and with Scott, “negotiable” is doing a lot of work.

Our episode drops September 17, once all four of us have seen it, and at least one of us has cried about a Belgian Malinois we were fully prepared to be mad about. Until then, come place your own predictions in our Discord — and if you haven’t read the book, it’s short, it’s beautiful, and you have until August 28.

Prediction scorecard pending. We grade ourselves here, in public, no mercy. — The Book Is Better Podcast

We’re The Book Is Better Podcast — a family of four comparing book-to-film adaptations, one argument at a time. New episodes every other Thursday. Find us wherever you listen, or come argue with us on Discord.