A24 Is Adapting Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower

A new adaptation of one of Octavia Butler’s books is on its way. Deadline reports that A24 has acquired the rights to her novels Parable of the Sower, and tapped Garrett Bradley to direct.

According to Deadline, A24 will finance and distribute the film, which will be produced by Paul Mezey. It will be Bradley’s first feature film—she has previously directed documentaries like Time and the just-released Naomi Osaka, and also worked as a second unit director for Netflix’s When they See Us.

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Parable of the Sower

Sower is one of Butler’s best-known novels. Set in the year 2024, it follows a young African American woman named Lauren Oya Olamina who has a condition known as hyper-empathy. She grows up in a gated community in California while the world around her and her family has begun to devolve into chaos—there’s violence on the streets, public services have been privatized, and wildfires rage out of control.

When her family compound is attacked, she flees with a neighbor and begins to collect fellow refugees who are drawn to her and the religion that she’s begun to develop: Earthseed. The book is the first of two—it’s followed by Parable of the Talents. Butler had begun work on a third novel, Parable of the Trickster, but never finished it before her untimely death in 2006.

Butler has been experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years: Parable of the Sower hit The New York Times Bestseller List for the first time last year, and there are a handful of adaptations of her books in the works: FX/Hulu is working on an adaptation of her novel Kindred, Ava Duvernay is working on an adaptation of her novel Dawn for Amazon, and Nnedi Okorafor is currently at work on an adaptation of Seed, set in Butler’s Patternist series.

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Ashgrove

3 years ago

LONG overdue!

Todi Granville

I am very excited. A24 makes great movies. They don’t compromise on artistic vision. Rookie director but with the help of that studio I’m sure she will make a great film.

C Baker

Several years ago I read what remains, to this day, the most infuriating Amazon review I’ve ever had the displeasure to read, even more than all the one star homophobic ones who hate penguins.

I hate that review so much I just dug it up so I can quote it so you can all hate it too:

Well written and somewhat interesting, but it falls into what I consider a “quasi” SF genre. Both stories are essentially social commentaries and the “science” associated with them is minimal. The concept of writing socially sensitive stories within a SF framework is very common – most of Heinlein and Ellison’s work is in that vein, just to name two. The problem I have is that the first story is closer to science fantasy than hard SF, and while the second deals with psionic powers, a traditional SF topic, it is so short that it was over before I really got into it. Its all a matter of taste, but I could not recommend the book.

As an aside, while the author is identified as famous within the SF circle, the circle referenced must be very small; as an avid SF reader since the late 50s and owner of over 2000 SF books I have never heard of her.

Antipodeanaut

I hope all these new productions do her work justice. Exciting times!