GVN sits down with Thomas Wheeler, the Academy Award–nominated screenwriter of Puss in Boots and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish to discuss his inventive middle grade adventure novel about an interdimensional school for time traveler.
GVN: Hello Mr. Wheeler! Thank you so much for stopping by Geek Vibes Nation to discuss your upcoming middle-grade sci-fi adventure, The Doomsday Vault. Could you start by telling our audience about yourself and your work?
Hello Geek Vibes Nation! Thank you for having me. Let’s see, a little about me: I’m a Dad of two, a husband of one, a big nerd, science enthusiast, loyal Philadelphia sports fan but have lived in Los Angeles most of my adult life, proud owner of 3 dogs including a 15-year-old-bulldog named Peaches who our vet has dubbed ‘the miracle bulldog’ because of her shocking longevity, my office is filled with toys and comic books, I love reading but most of it is research these days (although a good survival tale when I’m on vacation is my ideal combo), I have a UFO podcast with my good friend Dave Foley, and I do a wicked karaoke Neil Diamond.
And I write stuff.
GVN: As someone who has succeeded as a screenwriter, what made you want to jump to middle-grade fiction?
It kind of depends on the idea. I’ve written fiction (although three novels over 25 years is not exactly prolific), but some ideas work better in a TV format or as a live action feature or as an animated feature. Sometimes you get lucky, and it can be more than one of these things. When it came to Everwhen the tone gave me Douglas Adams vibes and he’s one of my personal heroes, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy being one of my favorite books of all time. It also was a moment when I was coming off of running a huge fantasy show in London – I was totally exhausted – so the notion of wearing my sweats and cuddling up in my office chair for a few months writing a book struck me as ideal. Also, early on in the process I knew I wanted to have these asides or interludes (Community Wall, Smoothie Menu) something that would immerse the audience in the experience of going to a time travel school, give it a taste of the day-to-day, and that was something that I could only do in a novel. (or a video game)
And yes, this is my first middle-grade-novel, but I’ve been writing for families in feature animation since Puss in Boots, and what I’ve found is: kids are the smartest audience of all. And I feel a real obligation to bring my A-game when I’m writing for a family audience. There is a misconception in Hollywood that younger audiences can’t handle emotional complexity, that you have to simplify things, soften things, but I totally disagree. Kids love big stakes, big problems and big emotions. Publishers and studios tend to scissor up the audience into ages, etc… but hopefully adults and kids alike can enjoy the happy chaos of Everwhen.
GVN: Could you talk about the origins of The Doomsday Vault novel? Were there any specific books or films that inspired it?
My Dad was a writer and actor but also a real science enthusiast and I have early memories of sitting in the backseat of his car at 10 or 11 years old listening to him try to explain quantum physics and Shrodinger’s Cat to my older brother. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what the heck he was talking about but it sure sounded interesting! Was the cat dead or not? And what is that supposed to tell us about the nature of reality? Was it a real cat? And what about these black holes floating around out there? Should I be concerned? They certainly seem fearsome given their enormous mass. I was intrigued! Embers of Everwhen lit up in those early days.
As a writer I tend to be leery of time travel as it always looks appealing from a distance but when you start tromping through the story weeds it’s easy to get lost and stuck in the quicksand. But when I came up with the Everwhen charter: “No child should be denied a great education simply by virtue of the time they were born in,” I felt like I was onto something. Mostly, because I wanted to play around with young people from different time periods contending with the same obstacles in this extraordinary school.
GVN: The book’s lead, Bertie, and his friends, Zoe and Millie, are engaging and entertaining characters. What are some of the keys to building characters readers fall in love with and root for?
Thank you! That’s nice to hear. Just on instinct I tend to operate with themes that resonate with me personally. I think when you bleed on the page a little bit – no matter how fantastic or absurd your fictional world – when you give your characters that secret pain, readers and audiences will connect. And as a creator or an author you want to love your characters, but you also have to be hard on them, you have to put them through a lot of struggle, ideally you want to force them to confront their greatest fears, and that can be difficult because you care about them. Yet it has to be done! Having said that, I was fortunate to work with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on the LEGO: Ninjago movie and one of them – I forget which one – made a great point, saying that audiences love to see their characters just enjoying themselves. And it’s so true. It doesn’t have to ALL be struggle and pain, as readers it can be great fun to hang out with our characters having fun, making friends, chilling out.
GVN: Another element of the novel that I loved was the worldbuilding. The time-displaced dorms were especially unique. What was the process of building this fictional world like? Was the worldbuilding refined throughout the various drafts, or was it pretty much there since the initial draft?
Pupin Dorms rule! I’ve never attempted something quite as ambitious as Everwhen in terms of sheer imaginative brute force. I left it all on the field for this one. But the short answer is yes, it took several drafts to get the world just right. The characters and their stories came together rather quickly but the big canvas of Everwhen evolved over several revisions.
One practical strategy I use in my world-building is to simply ask myself fifty questions (start with fifty) and FORCE myself to answer them. They can be about anything, geography, religion, how does this work, how does that work, what’s the history, who founded this world, mythology, ghost stories, types of buildings, and on and on and on. It’s labor intensive but also freeing. First of all, you’ll make terrific discoveries about your world when you try to objectively answer these questions. Try not to contradict yourself but otherwise have fun. This is why it’s different than making the ‘rules!’ This exercise should be all about invention. When you get into your story, you’ll find a lot of the architecture and infrastructure has been built in advance and it will give your world a deeper sense of place and dimension and your characters will have a history to draw upon that will give them additional layers as well.
GVN: What was the most rewarding part of writing this book?
I have to say this part of the process is pretty darn rewarding because people are finally reading Everwhen! I’ve been hammering away on this bad boy for a good four years – off and on – so its incredibly gratifying to finally see it in novel form and to be able to discuss it with readers.
The most fun I had writing had to be the asides, letters to the editor, school memos, etc… I could do a whole book of those bits and pieces of everyday Everwhen life. They cracked me up.
GVN: What was the most challenging part of writing this book? How did you overcome that challenge?
Well, I was extremely fortunate to be able to set up the animated feature rights for Everwhen with Paramount Animation early on in the process. What was challenging about it was that I was writing the screenplay and at the same time doing revisions on the novel, and on many occasions, ideas popped up in the movie version that I liked a lot and then HAD to put in the novel, so there was this strange co-mingling that often made me insane. It definitely made my editor insane. Plus, I find novel revisions quite intimidating. I’ll do them, of course, but screenplay revisions are so much easier. Not sure why, maybe it’s because screenplays by their very nature are blueprints for something else. They’re blueprints – sort of architectural designs – for a movie. Whereas your novel chapters are the finished product. In theory. So, I find it a bit more painful to make those cuts and revisions.
GVN: Do you have a favorite scene or character?
Perhaps because it’s the first scene I wrote for Everwhen, but Bertie’s introduction with the primordial black hole is a favorite. I loved writing his parents’ reaction to everything that was going on. The Pupin dorm was a lot of fun to dream up. And Bertie’s moment with Dean Chen in the Hall of Heroes is also a personal favorite because it sums up a lot of the important themes of the story.
GVN: Paramount optioned the film rights to the series back in 2021. Could you give us any updates on the adaptation process?
All I can say at this stage is that we have a great team: Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian (famous for the Transformers movie series) are onboard as producers along with Scott Mosier who directed Illumination’s The Grinch. So far so good! Fingers crossed!
GVN: Over the last several years, more and more authors have been attached to the adaptations of their books. What are your thoughts on that as someone with a foot in both worlds? Why do you think it has taken Hollywood so long to ‘invite authors in’? Do you think this will eventually be the norm?
I hope so! I’ve seen more and more examples of authors adapting their own work and I agree it’s a good thing. It’s the best way to maintain the vision for a story. In the past Hollywood had this attitude of ‘we know best.’ You saw that in the earlier adaptations of comics for example (Donner’s Superman exempted) before Marvel Studios built their movies on the foundations that the comics had built. For the longest time TV writers had a hard time transitioning to features and feature writers would not lower themselves to work in TV. Well, you really saw that change over the past decade or so. Hopefully, Hollywood takes a more holistic view of writers in general and stops trying to pigeonhole everyone into mediums or tones or genres.
GVN: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on next?
There are a few things I’m really excited about. I’m about to launch on a graphic novel adaptation for Disney called Delilah Dirk that has Daisy Ridley attached to star, I’m also working on a pair of animated features for ZAG studios, creators of the Miraculous series on Netflix and my son and I just sold a horror short story to 20th Century Studios with Dr. Strange director Scott Derrickson onboard producing, so that should be a ton of fun. My first horror movie! My daughter and I also have a TV project – a family crime thriller – in the works at Skydance. On top of that I’m laying the bricks for the Everwhen sequel with some new students from the future I’m jazzed to introduce.
GVN: Where can readers connect with you online?
@thomaswheelerofficial
Fun Bonus Questions
GVN: Please assign a yearbook superlative to Bertie, Millie, and Zoe.
Most Likely to be Devoured by an Interdimensional Turnip – Bertie Wells (also won Most Likely to Be Late for Class and Most Likely to Drop His Glasses into the Toilet)
Most Likely to Have an Ever-Ring Project End up in the Doomsday Vault – Zoe Fuentes (also won Most Likely to Survive the Hunger Games)
Best School Spirit – Mille Da Vinci (also won Cutest Couple That Never Was w/Bertie Wells and Most Talkative)
GVN: Where (and when) would your Everwhen dorm be located and why?
I hear the Jurassic treehouses are fun!
The Doomsday Vault will be available for purchase everywhere books are sold on January 28th, 2025.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Wheeler is a screenwriter, producer, showrunner, and the author of The Arcanum. He was the executive producer and creator of Empire for ABC and The Cape for NBC. In feature animation he wrote the Academy Award–nominated Puss in Boots, as well as The Lego Ninjago Movie. Together with Frank Miller, he is cocreator and executive producer of Cursed, based upon the novel of the same name. Thomas is also the author of the Everwhen School of Time Travel middle grade book series.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When Bertie Wells accidentally creates a black hole in his bedroom in the year 1878, it’s the very last thing he expects—except maybe the grown-up who steps out. Darla Marconi dresses and speaks like no one Bertie has met and comes with an offer: Bertie is invited to attend the College of Space Machines, Multiverses, and Other Odd Sciences (COSMOS for short, because no one would go to a school called COSMMOOS). He is skeptical to say the least but, not having anything better to do, Bertie agrees. His day only gets weirder from there as he’s transported to 2022 for his first semester of school. Thankfully, he’s not alone—144 years in the future, math whiz Zoe Fuentes just accepted the same invitation, and 550 years in the past, Amelia da Vinci (yes, that da Vinci) has also decided to attend. The three team up and work together to survive the year, including weathering a time paradox, solving the case of a disappearing dean, and uncovering the truth behind a shady intergalactic secret society. At least time is on their side!

Writer. Video Essayist. Film/TV Critic. Pop Culture Enthusiast.
When he isn’t writing for Geek Vibes Nation or The Cinema Spot, Tristian can be found typing away at one of the novels or screenplays he’s been working on forever.