FX to adapt Octavia E. Butler's Kindred as a TV series

The Hollywood Reporter

The late science fiction author's 1979 novel Kindred is considered one of the most influential novels of the past 50 years, incorporating time travel and modeled on slave narratives. Playwright and Watchmen consulting producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is writing the TV pilot based on the book and will executive produce Courtney Lee-Mitchell, who holds rights to the book, Darren Aronofsky and The Americans creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. FX's take on Kindred will center on Dana, "a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has left her life of familial obligation and moved to Los Angeles," per. The Hollywood Reporter. "But before she can get settled into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time to a 19th century plantation with which she and her family are most 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." Jacobs-Jenkins says of his adaptation: "Since my first encounter with the novel nearly two decades ago, there have been few, if any, books and even fewer authors who have meant as much to me as Kindred and Octavia Butler. It has been the highlight and honor of my career thus far to try and finally bring this timeless story to life — and especially at FX, whose catalogue of bold, thought-provoking, and cutting-edge television has been an endless source of inspiration and delight."