There’s literally no escape from the past for the hero of FX’s sci-fi series Kinshipthe long-awaited screen adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi author Octavia E. Butler‘s 1979 book of the same title. In this sci-fi drama series, Dana James is a young black woman and writer who moves to Los Angeles with her husband Kevin Franklin. While trying to settle into her promising new life, Dana suffers from vertigo, during which she finds herself transported back to America’s pre-Civil War past, when slavery was still practiced.
Even more puzzling is the difference between how time passes in the past versus the present. Time passes quickly in the past, which means that an experience that takes several hours there could only take a minute in the present. It’s a complexity that showrunner The Jacobs-Jenkins fire said he wanted to capture on screen. “She lives in both past and present and at different rates.” And because her past experiences change her, “the longer she stays in the past, the more exponentially difficult it is for her to return home.”
With all that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about this genre and time series.
When and where will Kindred be released?
Get ready to binge Kinship starting December 13, 2022. All eight episodes of the series are set to release at the same time. Produced by FX and Protozoa Pictures, Kinship will stream exclusively on Hulu. An ad-supported Hulu subscription costs $7.99 per month, while an ad-free subscription costs $14.99.
Watch on Hulu
The trailer opens with a disoriented present-day Dana who inexplicably finds herself on a shore in 19th-century Maryland, with a white boy who is drowning in the river. Dana rushes to save the boy and manages to revive him with CPR, only to be accosted by a white man with a shotgun, demanding, “What the hell is going on here?” What did Dana actually do in the pre-war period when slavery was still common practice on the plantations of South America? When Dana emerges from her first time travel and transports herself to present-day Los Angeles, she screams in terror and her white husband asks, “What’s going on?”
Dana struggles to make sense of it all as we see her shuttle between past and present. Soon Dana is back south, fleeing for her life, being chased and beaten by a white man. Mysteriously, she saves the same white boy again – this time from a fire. His forays into the past plunge his current life into chaos. A police car is shown in front of his house, sirens blaring. A knife is drawn. Dana is seen in a tub, the water red with blood. It seems the cost of his involuntary trips to the past could very well be his life in the present.
Mallory Johnson stars like Dana. A relatively newcomer, Johnson played Bea in We crashed and set to appear as Ellie in upcoming comedy-drama The other Zoe. Dana’s husband Kevin is played by Micah Stockwho is perhaps best known for his role as Deke Slayton in The good thing. Southern characters Dana encounters in the past (and who seem to have ties to her future) include Ryan Kwanten (Glorious) like Thomas Weylin, Gaelle Rankin (GLOW) as his wife Margaret Weylin, and David Alexander Kaplan (stranger things) as a young boy Rufus. austin smith, Sophie Brownand Sheria Irving complete the cast.
Kinship showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an Obie Award-winning playwright. His previous plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for nothing less than the Pulitzer Prize. Described by The New York Times as “one of this country’s most original and illuminating writers,” Jacobs-Jenkins is known for delving into issues surrounding class and race through a historical lens. His TV work includes HBO watchmen series and Prime Video Outdoor beach. The director of Jacobs-Jenkins produces Kinship with other heavy hitters Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel from Protozoa Pictures and the showrunners of Americans, Joe Weisberg and Joel Champsnext to Courtney Lee Mitchell and Julian Jackson. Zola director Janicza Bravo the executive produced and directed the pilot. Matthew County is credited as writer and co-executive producer on the project, along with Alonso Alvarez also credited as director and producer. Other producers include Amanda Marsalis (co-executive producer) and Ernestine Walker (executive producer). The photography of the series was carried out by Cybel Martin and Anka Malatynska. For more information about the crew, you can use this link.
What is Kindred about? (And more Octavia E. Butler adaptations to watch)
The official synopsis reads:
As Dana, a young black woman and aspiring writer, begins to settle into her new home, she finds herself pulled back and forth in time, emerging on a 19th-century plantation and confronting secrets she did not know how to cross his blood.
Fans of Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel can finally expect to see Kinship onscreen, knowing that the source material has enough complexity and thrill to fill a series. And for audiences who may not be familiar with Butler’s work, it could serve as the perfect introduction. Butler is the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and one of the first African-American science fiction writers to achieve fame, selling millions of books until his unfortunate death in 2006 at the age of 58. treasure trove of stories, many of which are ready to be adapted. Apart from this series, HBO is adapting Butler’s vampire novel Young in a series with executive producers Issa Rae and JJ Abrams and A24 is working on a film adaptation of parable of the sower with Garrett Bradley (Time) to manage.
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Release Date, Trailer, Cast, And Everything We Know So Far – GameSpot