FX Orders Adaptation Of Octavia E. Butler’s Influential Novel ‘Kindred’
US network FX has ordered an adaptation of the profoundly influential novel ‘Kindred‘, it has been announced. The eight-episode series will be produced by FX Productions.
‘Kindred’ is centred on “Dana”, 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. An interracial romance threads through her 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 drama will star Mallori Johnson (‘WeCrashed’) in the lead as Dana, alongside stars Micah Stock (‘The Right Stuff’), Ryan Kwanten (‘True Blood’, ‘Sacred Lies’), Gayle Rankin (‘GLOW’, ‘Perry Mason’), Austin Smith (‘Hamilton’, ‘Random Acts of Flyness’), Antoinette Crowe-Legacy (‘Godfather of Harlem’) and David Alexander Kaplan (‘Creepshow’, ‘Embattled’).
The series is based on MacArthur Fellow and Hugo Award winner Octavia E. Butler’s enormously popular and influential novel, which has been hailed as a visionary work of science fiction since it was first published more than four decades ago in 1979.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (‘Watchmen’, ‘An Octoroon’) will serve as showrunner and writer on the television adaptation of this classic work and executive produce along with Courtney Lee-Mitchell (‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’), Darren Aronofsky (‘mother!’, ‘The Fountain’) and Ari Handel (‘One Strange Rock’, ‘Noah’) of Protozoa Pictures, Joe Weisberg (‘The Americans’), Joel Fields (‘Fosse/Verdon’, ‘The Americans’), Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz. The pilot of Kindred was directed and executive produced by Janicza Bravo, director and co-writer of the critically-acclaimed feature ‘Zola’.
“Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has done a phenomenal job of adapting Kindred for FX and honouring the legacy and timeless value of Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking novel,” said Grad. “The pilot directed by Janicza Bravo is brilliant and we can’t wait to resume production with this incredibly talented and dedicated cast.”
‘Kindred‘ will premiere on FX in the USA, and presumably on Disney+ in the UK (although that is not confirmed at this point). If you want to keep track of this or any other show, you can add it via our Never Miss system, and you’ll be notified when it gets a UK premiere date.
