EXCLUSIVE: AMC Studios has acquired the television rights to Jeff VanderMeer’s popular Borne universe novels to develop as a potential series. The books all take place within the same mysterious, mind-bending universe VanderMeer launched in 2017 with Borne, followed by The Strange Bird, and the latest, Dead Astronauts, set to publish today. VanderMeer will serve as an executive producer and creative consultant on the project.

Borne tells the story of Rachel who, surviving as a scavenger in a ruined city of the future destroyed by an evil company, discovers a mysterious creature she longs to keep despite her companion’s warnings and her own reservations. “Am I a person?” Borne asked me. “Yes, you are a person,” I told him. “But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.” The stand-alone Dead Astronauts details the fight against the Company in a spectacular adventure across time and space.

Jeff VanderMeer Courtesy of Jeff Vandermeer

“I’m so excited about this partnership and working with AMC on the Borne universe,” VanderMeer said. “I’ve had such productive, energizing, and creative conversations with the wonderful folks involved and look forward to the road ahead.”

“The Borne Universe is a totally unique piece of IP and Jeff has created a vivid postapocalyptic world with enormous opportunity for a visual medium like television,” said Ben Davis, executive vice president of programming for AMC Studios.

The Borne books are published by MCD at Farrar Straus and Giroux. A national bestseller, Borne was praised as one of the “Best Books of 2017,” was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and has been named an NEA Big Read. Dead Astronauts has already received wide-spread critical acclaim, including making Esquire’s list of the best books of the year.

Vandermeer also is the author of the bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy.The first novel in the trilogy, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards and was adapted into a feature film by director Alex Garland. VanderMeer also penned the novel Shriek: An Afterword.

VanderMeer is repped by Gersh for film and television and CookeMcDermid for publishing.