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Kindred | Official Teaser - Time | FX

Source: FX / FX

There’s something eerie going on. The trailer for Octavia Butler’s Kindred shows a Black woman saving a drowning white child in period clothing only to be met with a shotgun to her face by a man who is presumably his father. Then, we are brought back to the same woman in a contemporary setting after what seems to be a bad dream.

Or was it?

If you’ve read Butler’s groundbreaking 1979 novel, you know the answers. But for those who haven’t, the first teaser trailer offers a look into the 8-part series that debuts on Hulu on Dec. 13.

The initial synopsis for the series:

“Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own. But, before she can get settled into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time to a nineteenth-century plantation with which she and her family are most surprisingly and intimately linked.”

Considered one of Black sci-fi’s pioneers, Butler’s Kindred sold over a million copies. She also wrote the Parable of the Sower and its sequel, Parable of the Talents, which were acclaimed bestsellers, before she died in 2006.

Dana is played by Mallori Johnson, a 2021 Juilliard graduate in one of her first onscreen roles. Joining her in the cast are True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, Micah Stock, who plays Dana’s white boyfriend, Gayle Rankin, Sheria Irving, Sophina Brown, Austin Smith, and David Alexander Kaplan.

Pulitzer Prize finalist and MacArthur’ Genius’ Grant recipient, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, penned the TV adaptation. Courtney Lee Mitchell, who acquired the rights to Kindred in 2008, is an executive producer.

“Since my first encounter with the novel nearly two decades ago, there have been few, if any, books and even fewer authors who have meant as much to me as Kindred and Octavia Butler,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a statement when the adaptation was announced in 2021. “It has been the highlight and honor of my career thus far to try and finally bring this timeless story to life – and especially at FX, whose catalog of bold, thought-provoking, and cutting-edge television has been an endless source of inspiration and delight.”

Watch the trailer below: