Shows and TV

Amazon MGM Studios is developing science fiction TV series Consider Phlebas. It is an adaptation of the novel by Iain M Banks, the first in the late Scottish author’s classic 10-book Culture book series about an interstellar post-scarcity society.

Interior Chinatown creator Charles Yu is writing and executive producing. The potential series also is executive produced by Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao through her production company Books of Shadows, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner for Plan B Entertainment as well as Adele Banks.

In Consider Phlebas, while war rages between the utopian Culture and the Idiran Empire, a Culture Ship AI “Mind” takes refuge on a forbidden planet. Both Horza, a shape-shifting mercenary working for the Idirans, and Balveda, a “Special Circumstances” Culture agent, have been tasked with retrieving it to tip the balance in a galaxy-spanning conflict. Consider Phlebas pits sentience against AI in an epic and bloody quest across the cosmos.

Amazon first teamed with Plan B to adapt Consider Phlebas six years ago as Prime Video was just getting into genre/sci-fi series in a major way with the mega rights deal for The Lord of the Rings TV series. A couple of months after setting Consider Phlebas for development with Utopia creator Dennis Kelly as writer, the streamer rescued canceled Syfy drama The Expanse, which was followed by the green light for shows like The Wheel of Time, The Boys, The Peripheral and Fallout. That initial Consider Phlebas TV incarnation ultimately didn’t go forward.