Coffee. It’s something that starts and ends things. Yes, we could say that many things do that, but we’re sitting here focusing on coffee because it has something to do with what we’re talking about. It has to do with a book that we love. What is it? Before The Coffee Gets Cold, based on the bestselling Japanese time-travel novel by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
The book has been optioned and is in development from Fox. The Spy creator Gideon Raff will serve as writer and showrunner. In addition to Raff, the project comes from Gail Berman’s Jackal Group (Wednesday) and Sony Pictures Television.
The book’s official description on Goodreads is, “What would you change if you could go back in time?“
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It continues, “In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.”
And then adds, “In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know. But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .”
ABOUT THE SHOW
The book takes place in Tokyo, but the show will not. The synopsis has changed for it: “In the heart of Japantown, San Francisco, a family-owned café offers more than just coffee—it serves as a bridge between past and present. Visitors line up, drawn by the chance to relive a moment that changed their lives, knowing they must return before their coffee grows cold. Though the past cannot be rewritten, the act of letting go in the present can open the door to a future filled with hope. But this barista family, whose selfless gift has brought solace to so many, must now confront the shadows of their own mysterious past—one that may cost them everything.”
We’re definitely looking forward to what could happen next here and how the adaptation will change the book. What do you think? Have you read it? Will you watch it? Tell us all the things.
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