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A Hollywood adaptation of S-Town is still in the works, with a fresh creative team.

Host Brian Reed tells The Hollywood Reporter that Apple TV+ is eying a limited series adaptation of the podcast, with Damages and Bloodline co-creator Daniel Zelman attached to develop the project.

Apple TV+ declined to comment. Zelman’s reps did not respond to requests for comment.

The hit 2017 nonfiction podcast centered on an oddball, genius antique clock restorer and his complex relationship with his rural Alabama community. When it was released over seven years ago, S-Town shattered podcast listenership records, gaining 16 million downloads in its first week and 40 million in its first month. The seven-part series from producers behind Serial and This American Life was praised for elevating the podcast form, with Slate deeming it “aural literature” and The New Yorker saying in 2018 that of all podcasts released up to that point, S-Town “seems most...

In 2018, journalist Brian Reed faced a lawsuit over his most celebrated project. S-Town, a podcast he had hosted and executive produced, had become a near-instant sensation the previous year, breaking listenership records, earning lofty praise and sparking debate around issues of consent and privacy for its deceased subject. Then the Peabody Award-winning series was hit with a claim from the estate of the podcast’s subject that alleged a violation of Alabama’s right of publicity law.

“In order to win their case, [the complainants] had to argue that S-Town wasn’t journalism, legally,” says Reed. “And it put me in a position of having to think about what journalism is in a very elemental way that I had never done before.”

The lawsuit eventually settled in 2020, with the executor stating the estate no longer had any issues with the podcast. But Reed kept pondering questions that arose during the saga. The...