Apple Sheepdogs Novel TV Series Deals Playtone Tom Hanks Gary Goetzman

On By Littum

EXCLUSIVE: In a strong year-end book deal, Apple Studios has paid seven figures for the Elliot Ackerman novel Sheepdogs for Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman to develop as a series. The book will be published in the summer of 2025 by Alfred K. Knopf/Penguin Random House. Eleven bidders were in the mix.

Ackerman is a former Marine Corps special operations team leader whose books include Halcyon, Green on Blue and Waiting for Eden. He also contributed to the writing 2034 and sequel 2054 with Admiral James Stavridis.

Sheepdogs revolves around Skwerl and Cheese, two elite paramilitary soldiers down on their luck. Skwerl is a former Marine who used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing, but was fired after a raid went wrong in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz is a legendary pilot, but the fall of Kabul has left him working the night shift at a gas station. Skwerl recruits Cheese into an anonymous network of so-called sheep dogs, which operate in the shadowy space between predator and prey. Their mission, which Skwerl persuades a reluctant Cheese to accept, is to reclaim a private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. Their fee: a commission on the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job makes sense. Your contact disappears. Their dealings are as mysterious as the actual source of the money. And when the women in their lives get involved – a pregnant wife and a dominatrix – the stakes soar.

As things go awry, they team up with an eccentric bomb technician knocked off the grid, an antiquated Amish adventurer, a used car dealer elected to Congress, and a caseworker known as the White Russian. Together they take a wild ride through the underbelly of modern war and intelligence, hopefully on their way to redemption.

Hanks and Goetzman’s Playtone comes from the acclaimed WWII series Masters of the Airand they’re gearing up for another sequel Greyhoundwith Hanks once again starring in the script he wrote and Aaron Schneider directed. The first film was based on The Good Shepherd by CS Forester.

CAA brokered the deal for PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit.