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# FX’s Kindred Adaptation Has Found its Director and Star
- URL: https://www.andrewliptak.com/fx-kindred-octavia-butler/
- Published: 2021-07-16T04:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2024-06-22T14:52:19.000Z
- Author: Andrew Liptak
- Tags: News, Science Fiction

Earlier this year, FX announced that it was adapting one of Octavia Butler’s best-known works: *Kindred.* It ordered a pilot for the project, which will be written by playwright and MacArthur Fellow Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

The project appears to be moving along: [According to *TheWrap*](https://www.thewrap.com/janicza-bravo-kindred-pilot-fx-zola-director/?ref=andrewliptak.com), FX has hired Janicza Bravo (*Zola*) to helm the pilot. The series has also tapped Mallori Johnson to star as the show’s lead character.

*Kindred* was first published in 1979, and it follows a woman named Dana Franklin (to be played by Johnson) as she unexpectedly finds herself jumping back and forth in time between the 1970s and a Maryland plantation in the 1800s. Going back in time, she meets some of her ancestors, including a boy named Rufus, who seems to be her anchor point in the past.

Speaking with *TheWrap*, Bravo explained that she first read Kindred while in college, and “I hadn’t ever seen myself in a world like that. And certainly not at its center.”

> What might seem like only a portrait of an invisible woman is also a potent embrace of our relationship to history and how it can bring us closer to our future. After what felt like losing over a year of the life I had come to know so well, an opportunity to direct an adaptation of this specific text was a win. On top of that getting to partner with Branden is something I’d been wanting for quite some time.

Jacobs-Jenkins will serve as writer and producer, with Darren Aronofsky, Joe Weisberg, and Joel Fields (*The Americans*) serving as executive producers. Johnson is a new actress who recently graduated from Julliard, and this appears to be her first role for television.

The project isn’t guaranteed to go onto a series—typically, a pilot episode is shown to a network and then picked up if it meets with said network’s expectations and strategy. This isn’t the only project from Butler that’s in the works either: Nnedi Okorafor is [currently working on an adaptation of *Wild Seed*](https://deadline.com/2019/03/wild-seed-drama-series-based-on-sci-fi-book-in-works-at-amazon-from-viola-davis-julius-tennons-juvee-productions-1202583070/?ref=andrewliptak.com), and Amazon Studios [is developing adaptation of *Dawn*](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/ava-duvernay-victoria-mahoney-team-dawn-tv-series-at-amazon-1281239/?ref=andrewliptak.com).