A week out from publication, “Babel” and “Yellowface” author R.F. Kuang‘s new fantasy novel “Katabasis” is already in the works as a TV series at Amazon MGM Studios. “The Walking Dead” showrunner Angela Kang is set as writer and showrunner on the project.
Releasing Aug. 26 from Harper Voyager Publishing, Kuang’s “Katabasis” is a fantastical academic satire that follows Alice Law, a graduate student studying Magick at Cambridge University, as she descends into the underworld to retrieve her deceased advisor, Professor Grimes, in order to get his recommendation to secure her future after graduation. Alice’s academic rival, Peter Murdoch, decides to join her, and together they embark on a journey through the courts of Hell in search of Grimes.
Amazon MGM Studios, which has optioned the TV rights for “Katabasis,” describes the adaptation as “a dark academia fantasy in which two graduate students in Magick must put aside their rivalry and journey through Hell to save their professor’s soul — perhaps at the cost of their own.”
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Kang will executive produce the project alongside Kuang, Mandy Safavi (via Kang’s Kang & Co. banner), Ben Smith and Jeffrey Weiner. Adam Docksey will co-executive produce for Captivate Ent.
Most recently, Kang was set as showrunner on the now-scrapped “Silk: Spider Society” live-action series at Amazon MGM Studios, where she is currently under a multi-year overall deal. Kang previously served as showrunner of “The Walking Dead” and is an executive producer on one of AMC’s ongoing spinoff series, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.” Kang got her start in the TV industry as a writer on FX’s “Terriers.”
“Katabasis” comes on the heels of back-to-back best sellers and awards darlings for Kuang: 2022’s “Babel,” which explores themes of imperialism, racism and capitalism through a fantastical version of Oxford University in the 1800s, and 2023’s “Yellowface,” a satirical novel covering racial diversity in the publishing industry.
Kuang’s debut work was the epic Chinese fantasy series “The Poppy War,” consisting of three books published between 2018 and 2020. An alum of Cambridge and Oxford and currently a PhD candidate at Yale, Kuang’s sales total more than four million copies across all of her novels combined.
Kuang is repped by Steve Fisher at IAG and Hannah Bowman at Liza Dawson Associates.
Kang is repped by Dave Park at UTA and A.B. Fischer at Literate.
