Film & TV NewsBranden Jacobs-Jenkins Will Pen Kindred Pilot for FXThe Pulitzer Prize finalist will also executive produce the project, based on the Octavia E. Butler novel.
By
Andrew Gans
March 09, 2021
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Pulitzer Prize Finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Everybody, Gloria) will write and executive produce a pilot for FX based on Octavia E. Butler's novel Kindred, according to Variety.
Butler's novel, first published in 1979, is modeled on slave narratives and concerns a young Black writer, Dana, who relocates to Los Angeles but is pulled back and forth in time to a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation, where she meets her ancestors.
“Since my first encounter with the novel nearly two decades ago, there have been few, if any, books and even fewer authors who have meant as much to me as Kindred and Octavia Butler,” Jacobs-Jenkins says. “It has been the highlight and honor of my career thus far to try and finally bring this timeless story to life—and especially at FX, whose catalogue of bold, thought-provoking, and cutting-edge television has been an endless source of inspiration and delight.”
Executive producers also include Courtney Lee-Mitchell, Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields, and Darren Aronofsky for Protozoa Pictures with co-executive producers Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz, and producer FX Productions.
Other works from MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient Butler, who passed away in 2006, include Fledgling, Parable of the Sower, and the Patternist series. Jacobs-Jenkins, a consulting producer for HBO's Watchmen, is also the playwright of AnOctoroon and Appropriate.
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Tonya Pinkins, Jeremy Shamos, Alysia Reiner, Jane Alexander and More Celebrate Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate
Tonya Pinkins, Jeremy Shamos, Alysia Reiner, Jane Alexander and More Celebrate Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate
The New York premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' familial drama Appropriate officially opened March 16 at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center following previews that began Feb. 25. Read the Playbill.com story.
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Christopher Burris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Tonya Pinkins and Marsha Stephanie Blake
Filmed in 2023, the one-night-only event featured Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, Peter Friedman, and more from the Ahrens and Flaherty musical's original cast.
