Hudson Williams, pictured in January, will appear in the play’s TV adaptation on the heels of his newfound Heated Rivarly stardom.Jordan Strauss/The Canadian Press
Heated Rivalry mania has hit the Canadian theatre world.
Yaga, written by Canadian playwright Kat Sandler, sold out across multiple booksellers this week, after the announcement that Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams will appear in the play’s TV adaptation. Playwrights Canada Press – Yaga’s imprint – still has copies in stock on their own website, but the company has put in an unprecedented order of 1,000 copies for the play’s next reprint, after previous Yaga reprints of no more than 200 copies at a time.
Yaga by Kat Sandler.Ama/Supplied
Prior to this week’s spike, the book had sold around 800 copies in three years, “which is really, really good for a play,” said Playwrights Canada Press publisher Annie Gibson.
“We’re so excited,” she said. “We found out about that piece of casting when the rest of the world did, and it just took off.” She added that Indigo placed an order for 200 copies after the casting news: “They’ve never done that before,” she said.
Rachel Reid’s wild Heated Rivalry ride
Crave’s casting announcement on Wednesday resulted in Playwrights Canada Press selling 71 copies of Yaga on its own website. Elsewhere, the book is currently sold out on Amazon and Indigo’s websites, as well as Barnes and Noble’s website in the U.S., though Gibson clarified that most third-party retailers may only have had “a handful” of copies in their warehouse prior to the news of Williams’s casting.
The most recent title to “blow up,” said Gibson, is William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal – the book has sold 2,710 copies since its publication in 2022, owing to Cardinal’s frequent touring of the play.
But Yaga marks new territory for Playwrights Canada Press – the imprint has never seen such a large, sudden interest in a title.
“We’re receiving Yaga orders from all over the world,” she said, adding that approximately 80 per cent of the surprise sales have been e-books. “Iceland, Hungary, Australia, Poland, Romania, Singapore. Hong Kong. Finland. It just goes on and on.”
According to Gibson, when Yaga was first published in 2023, its original print run was 626 copies, because of Sandler’s relative popularity within Canada — “that’s a little bit more than we would normally do for a book,” said Gibson, explaining that a typical Playwrights Canada Press initial run is about 400 books.
Though the overnight interest in Playwrights Canada Press carries excitement for Gibson, she’s proceeding with caution: This early on, before Yaga has even hit the airwaves, it’s tough to forecast how long sales will continue to rise.
“What if, tomorrow, Connor Storrie announces his own TV show and the moment moves?” she said. “We get charged for keeping books in stock – if we print too many, we have to pay for it. We’re starting small for now while we wait to see what the temperature is.”
Playwrights Canada Press is based in Canada, making reprints easy: The company’s printer is located in Quebec, which keeps the press’s supply chain relatively uncomplicated, even when books move to Theatre Communications Group, the company’s U.S. distributor. Gibson doesn’t expect significant production backlogs, even if Yaga eventually sells as many copies as, for instance, Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry.
“We’re lucky,” said Gibson. “After what happened with Heated Rivalry, we have a bit of knowledge about where this book could go. We’re not going to overdo it, but I want to make sure that people can get their hands on something they want to read. I don’t want people to have to wait.”
Production is now under way on Yaga, which will also star Canadians Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid and Clark Backo. A release date has not yet been set for the stage-to-screen adaptation, produced by Front Street Pictures and Blink49 Studios for Crave with Sandler acting as showrunner.