Kindred: What We Know About FX’s Octavia E. Butler Adaptation
FX has put in a series order for Kindred, an adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s seminal 1979 novel. Watchmen producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will serve as showrunner while Zola director Janicza Bravo
is executive producing and helming the pilot episode.
Like its source material, Kindred the series follows a young Black woman named Dana, a budding writer who moves to Los Angeles and finds herself thrown back and forth in time between present day and a 19th-century plantation that has mysterious links to her and her family. According to FX, “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.”
Here’s what else we know about the series so far.
Who’s in it?
Newcomer Mallori Johnson will lead as Dana. Other stars include Micah Stock (The Right Stuff), Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), Gayle Rankin (The Greatest Showman), Austin Smith (Random Acts of Flyness), Antoinette Crowe-Legacy (Godfather of Harlem), and David Alexander Kaplan (Embattled).
There are also big names behind the scenes. Joining Jacobs-Jenkins as executive producers are 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.
When does it come out?
There is no release date yet, but we do know that the series will be eight episodes long.