N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities series, specifically The City We Became and The World We Make, has been picked up by Walden Media for television adaptation.
Variety broke the news that the production company, which is behind the Apple TV+ series Manhunt and Netflix’s The Babysitters Club, preemptively acquired Jemisin’s work and will produce and co-finance the project.
“We couldn’t be more excited to take on N.K. Jemisin’s immersive, diverse and utterly enthralling tale about found family and the aching desire to be part of a community,” Naia Cucukov, executive VP of development and production at Walden Media, told Variety. “We’ve been huge fans of N.K.’s work for years, and we see this as a cornerstone project for Walden’s mission to work with transformative and inspirational voices in culture.”
The Great Cities series are about New York City, where each borough’s soul is magically embodied in an avatar. The city is faltering, however, as it faces another attack from a multi-faced Lovecraftian menace that the avatars must protect the city against. The book is more than just its plot, however, and in his review of The City We Became, Tochi Onyebuchi describes Jemisin’s work as showing “a New York, not of unmade communities, but of remade ones, the scar tissue stronger than unbroken skin.”
The project is still in its very early stages, so—assuming (and hoping) it makes it all the way to production—it will still be a while before we see this adaptation on screen.
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The City We Became
