Ava DuVernay and Victoria Mahoney’s series adaptation of Octavia Butler’s sci-fi novel, Dawn, has landed at Amazon.

Shadow & Act exclusively broke the news in 2015 that Dawn was in development as a TV series in an interview with Allen Bain. In 2017, we reported that DuVernay, Mahoney and MACRO were attached to the project when MACRO optioned the novel.

Now, two years later, Amazon has been attached to the project and has given the project a script-to-series commitment. Mahoney is the writer and will direct the pilot. The studios are Amazon Studios and MACRO Television Studios, partnered with DuVernay’s ARRAY Filmworks.

In Dawn, after the war has culminated in a nuclear apocalypse and the near extermination of the human race, the survivors are rescued by an alien species and kept in suspended animation on an Earth-like spaceship. Lilith Iyapo, a Black woman, is the first to be awakened and is chosen to lead her people into an uncertain future. She is faced with a choice: adapt or die. But, what good is survival if it comes at the cost of humanity?

MACRO’s Charles D. King, DuVernay, Mahoney, Bain, Gary Pearl and Thomas L. Carter will executive produce the series. Marta Fernandez is overseeing for MACRO Television Studios.

Two of Butler’s works are being adapted for television right now. Viola Davis, Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu are developing Wild Seed also at Amazon.

Butler was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship and is often referred to as the “grande dame of science fiction.” Her prolific work garnered two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award. Butler died in 2006 and was posthumously inducted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

READ MORE:

‘Wild Seed’: Viola Davis Developing Adaptation Of Octavia Butler Novel At Amazon, Scripted By Nnedi Okorafor And Wanuri Kahiu

Ava DuVernay is developing Octavia Butler’s sci-fi novel, ‘Dawn’ as a television series with Macro, Victoria Mahoney

Photo: Getty

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