This one is hard to fit into a headline, but it’s extremely good news: Variety reports that the new James S.A. Corey series, The Captive’s War—which began with August’s The Mercy of Gods—is coming to television. And what’s more, it’s coming into existence thanks to four key players on the excellent series adaptation of Corey’s The Expanse.
Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write under the Corey pen name, have formed a “multi-platform media company” called Expanding Universe alongside The Expanse showrunner Naren Shankar and regular Expanse director Breck Eisner. They have a developmental deal with Amazon MGM Studios, and their first project is The Captive’s War, TV edition. (Variety notes that Expanding Universe “will be announcing additional projects soon,” which is a potentially very exciting little phrase.)
The Captive’s War is planned as a trilogy, but having read the first book (and the novella Livesuit) I can’t help but hope the creators get to do more than three seasons. There’s a lot to pack in in this story of feuding academics who find their lives astonishingly changed with the arrival of an alien species, the Carryx, who instantly subjugate their world and haul off the best and brightest to work in one of the aliens’ far distant and overwhelmingly large cities. They must accomplish a task set to them by the aliens, or their entire species will be toast. Or, as the announced adaptation synopsis puts it:
Set in a distant future of galactic empires and alien civilizations, and inspired by the biblical Book of Daniel, The Captive’s War follows a group of prisoners who rise from the ashes of catastrophe to destroy their conqueror’s society from within. It is an epic tale about the transformative power of individuality in a totalitarian world.
The Mercy of Gods has an ensemble cast and a lot of very vividly imagined alien species, most of which the humans see as a mix of two animals they are familiar with (a goat and a cuttlefish?). The settings are disorientingly alien, the aliens themselves deeply alien. The story is a tangle of moral quandaries and arguments about how to keep going when your world is irrevocably changed. It’s really, really good.
All four founders of Expanding Universe will executive produce The Captive’s War, with Shankar serving as showrunner and writer, Abraham and Franck writing, and Eisner directing.
As for Expanding Universe, Eisner tells Variety that the company “is focused on developing sci-fi narratives with sweeping world-building and elevated storylines, geared toward multi-platform expressions in filmed entertainment, gaming, and publishing.” And Abraham adds, “Our track record has already attracted some exciting material: original features, adaptations by other novelist’s work, and even legacy IPs which would be a blast to reimagine in a modern context.”
We’ll be over here anxiously awaiting more news on both The Captive’s War and whatever else is up their sleeves.
