Deadline is reporting Amazon Studios has hopped on board with MACRO Television Studios to partner with Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Filmworks to develop a TV adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s 1987 sci-fi novel Dawn. Victoria Mahoney (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Lovecraft Country) has been set as creator and will adapt and direct the pilot.
The classic 1987 Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel, which was optioned by MACRO, follows Lilith Iyapo, an African-American woman who has been kept asleep in an alien space ship along with several other survivors for 250 years after the earth destroyed in a nuclear war. Now, the aliens are calling on her to resurrect the human race.
In addition to serving as second unit director on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, she has directed numerous TV series including Veena Sud’s Netflix series Seven Seconds, Patty Jenkins’ TNT limited series I Am the Night, Netflix’s You, TNT’s Claws and HBO’s forthcoming horror series Lovecraft Country from J.J. Abrams, Misha Green and Jordan Peele. She also worked on the CBS drama The Red Line which DuVernay produced alongside Greg Berlanti. She also directed the film Yelling To The Sky with Gabourey Sidibe.
Butler was known to use sci-fi to address issues of race, gender and hierarchy. She blazed the trail for inclusive storytelling and made history as the first writer in the genre to be awarded the MacArthur Fellowship (aka the Genius Grant). Dawn is the first book in what has been called Butler’s “Lilith’s Brood” trilogy, which also includes 1988’s Adulthood Rites and 1989’s Imago.
Mahoney will also serve as an executive producer alongside DuVernay and MACRO’s Charles D. King who has worked on Mudbound and Raising Dion. Allen Bain, Gary Pearl and Thomas L.Carter will executive produce while Marta Fernandez, President of MACRO Television Studios, will oversee.
Loading…