FX Is Developing a Series Adaptation of the "Genre-Breaking" Sci-Fi Novel KINDRED
FX is developing a series adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s influential 1979 novel Kindred, and newcomer Mallori Johnson is set to star. The network has made a full series order, and it comes from writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen) and producers Courtney Lee-Mitchell (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler), Joe Weisberg (The Americans), and Joel Fields (Fosse/Verdon).
The series will consist of eight-episode and the story centers on Dana (Johnson), “a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own. But, before she can get settled into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time to a nineteenth-century plantation with which she and her family are surprisingly and intimately linked.”
It’s explained that the story also includes an interracial romance that threads through Dana’s past and present, “and the clock is ticking as she struggles to confront the secrets she never knew ran through her blood, in this genre-breaking exploration of the ties that bind.”
The novel is “hailed as a visionary work of science fiction,” and the series also stars Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan.
Nick Grad, President, Original Programming FX said, “Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has done a phenomenal job of adapting Kindred for FX and honoring the legacy and timeless value of Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking novel. The pilot directed by Janicza Bravo is brilliant and we can’t wait to resume production with this incredibly talented and dedicated cast.”
Have you read the book? If so, do you think this will make for a good and successful series for FX?
Source: Deadline