Ava DuVernay, Charles D. King, and Victoria Mahoney to adapt Octavia Butler's DAWN for Television

Yesterday, it was announced that Hugo and Nebula Award Winner Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis / Lilith's Brood series, which begins with DAWN, will be adapted into a TV series by Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th, the upcoming 2018 release A Wrinkle in Time) and Victoria Mahoney (Queen Sugar, Yelling to the Sky) in their most recent collaboration.

Charles King's production company Macro will produce the series. Macro has previously produced Oscar-nominated Fences and this year's biggest title out of Sundance, Mudbound, which was won by Netflix.

DAWN marks the first time one of Butler's novels will be adapted for television. Previously, PARABLE OF THE SOWER was adapted into a work-in-progress opera while earlier this year, KINDRED was adapted into a graphic novel.

The sci-fi series takes place 250 years after a nuclear war, and stars an African-American woman named Lilith who works together with aliens in order to resurrect the human race after it was all but destroyed. An alien race called the Oankali rescued Lilith and other survivors as Earth was dying and put them into deep sleep for centuries while they learned all they could about the planet. Now, it's up to Lilith to help them resettle the Earth, but humanity will never be like it was before the nuclear fallout.

DAWN is succeeded by the sequels ADULTHOOD RITES and IMAGO.

Butler's career, which began in 1971 with short stories, began taking off in 1984 when her short story "Speech Sounds" won the Hugo Award. Her short story "Bloodchild" would win a triad of the Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards the following year. She would go on to next write KINDRED and the Xenogenesis trilogy that begins with DAWN, then, in 1995, become the first science-fiction writer to win the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

The deal for DAWN was brokered by Butler's estate; the agent represented was Merrily Heifetz of Writers House, LLC, with Gary Pearl. Executive Producers of the series will include Allen Bain, Thomas L. Carter, Poppy Hanks, Gary Pearl, Kim Roth, and Teddy Smith.

There's no news yet on what channel the series will land on or what actors will be cast, but BroadwayWorld will keep you updated as we learn more about this exciting new show as it gets closer to production.

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