The work of respected science fiction author Octavia E. Butler has been eyed by filmmakers for years as potential material to adapt for screens big and small, though nothing has actually hit the screens yet. Now Amazon is looking to change that, with Viola Davis and her JuVee Productions partner Julius Tennon working on bringing Butler's Wild Seed to the streaming service.
Drawn from the third book in the Patternmaster series (which actually kicked off the narrative in chronological terms), the story is one of love and hate, following two African immortals who travel the ages from pre-Colonial West Africa to the far, far future. Doro, a killer who uses his power to breed people like livestock, encounters Anyanwu, a healer who forces him to reassess his millennia of cruel behavior: for centuries, their personal battles change the course of our world as they struggle against the backdrop of time — master vs slave, man vs woman, killer vs healer.
Novelist Nnedi Okorafor (herself an award-winner) and Rafiki filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu wrote the script, with Kahiu on to direct the eventual series. "Wild Seed is a book that shifted my life," says Davis. "It is as epic, as game changing, as moving and brilliant as any Science Fiction novel ever written. Julius and I are proud to have this masterpiece in our hands. It fulfills our promise and legacy to be disrupters. Octavia Butler was a visionary and we look forward to honoring the scope of her work and sharing it with the world." Davis had been pursuing the rights for more than two years, and finally cracked how to adapt it with Okorafor and Kahiu, scoring the approval of Butler's estate, which has kept the rights since the author's death in 2006. Amazon snapped up the chance to make the show after a bidding war.
And Wild Seed is not the only Butler adaptation making its way to screens, as Ava DuVernay is looking to put Dawn, the story of aliens working with a woman to resurrect the human race after a devastating war on to TV, while Kindred is also in development. That one follows Dana, an African-American woman, who is transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early 19th-century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, a black freewoman forced into slavery later in life.
Keep up to date with all the latest movie news, click here to subscribe to Empire on Great Magazines and have the latest issue delivered to your door every month.