FX has ordered to series its TV adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Kindred” from Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Darren Aronofsky and “The Americans” creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. A first-look photo of the show (pictured above) has also been released.
Picked up as a pilot in March 2021, the eight-episode sci-fi show centers on Dana (newcomer Mallori 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. 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.
Along with Johnson, FX’s “Kindred” stars Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan.
“Watchmen” alum Jacobs-Jenkins is showrunner and writer on “Kindred,” and executive produces along side Courtney Lee-Mitchell, who acquired the rights to the novel in 2008, Aronofsky and Ari Handel of Protozoa Pictures, Weisberg, Fields, Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz. “Zola” filmmaker Janicza Bravo directed and executive produced the pilot.
Based on Butler’s 1979 MacArthur Fellow and Hugo Award winner of the same name, “Kindred” hails from FX Productions.
“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,” Nick Grad, president of original programming at FX, said. “The pilot directed by Janicza Bravo is brilliant and we can’t wait to resume production with this incredibly talented and dedicated cast.”