FX orders adaptation of Octavia E Butler’s sci-fi novel Kindred to series

Sci-fi series Kindred

FX has ordered an eight-episode series based on Octavia E Butler’s MacArthur Fellow- and Hugo Award-winning novel Kindred, to be produced by FX Productions.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen) will write, serve as showrunner and executive produce with Courtney Lee-Mitchell, Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields, Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz.

The pilot stars Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan, and was directed and executive produced by Janicza Bravo (Zola).

Kindred has been hailed as a visionary work of science fiction since it was first published more than four decades ago in 1979.

FX’s adaptation is centred on a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to LA, 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 19th 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.

“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 Nick Grad, president of original programming at FX.

FX is a division of Disney General Entertainment and develops, produces, commissions and markets original programming for Hulu and the FX and FXX linear channels in the US, Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in all other international territories.