It’s a big day for a certain Murderbot who just wants to watch its soaps. Apple TV+ has announced that it’s adapting Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series, with Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, The Northman) on board as executive producer and to star as the titular Murderbot.
The scripts for the ten-episode season have already been written (before the writers’ strike, in fact), and production is set to start in just three months. Directors Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy, Mozart in the Jungle) are the creators of the show (as well as the writers, directors and producers via their banner Depth of Field) and also serve as executive producers. Other executive producers include David S. Goyer, the showrunner for Apple TV+’s Foundation series, Keith Levine from the company Phantom Four, and Andrew Miano for Depth of Field. Wells serves as a consulting producer.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Murderbot Diaries, the books center on a security android (or, as it likes to call itself, Murderbot) who hacks itself out of the shackles of its programming but still finds itself caring about its human clients (and some other A.I. folks as well) even though it doesn’t understand them.
According to Apple TV+, the show adaptation will see Murderbot “hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.”
No news yet on when the show will premiere on the streaming platform or who will be joining Skarsgård on the call sheet, but I personally can’t wait to get the first look imagery of The Northman actor wearing a mech suit.
