*Ava DuVernay, Charles D. King, and Victoria Mahoney will turn Octavia E. Butler‘s sci-fi novel “Dawn” into a television series, reports Variety.
The novel follows an African-American woman who works with aliens to resurrect the human race 250 years after a nuclear war.
In Dawn, and the two books that follow, Butler writes about Lilith Iyapo, a woman who straddles the worlds between two complex species, and whose struggles reflect the same racial, sexual, and political issues we experience in our daily lives.
This will be the first time the award-winning author’s work has been adapted for television.
King’s Macro shingle will produce, with writer-director Mahoney adapting. Kim Roth, Poppy Hanks, Allen Bain, Gary Pearl, Thomas L. Carter, and Teddy Smith will join DuVernay and King as EPs, with Forward Movement, Oil & Cattle and Bainframe as additional producers.
Butler died in 2006, and her estate was represented in this deal by its agent, Merrilee Heifetz of Writers House, LLC, with Gary Pearl.
Below: To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Octavia E. Butler’s novel Dawn, author N. K. Jemisin speaks about the novel’s significance and how Butler paved the way for African-American science fiction writers.
