EXCLUSIVE: Keshet Studios has acquired TV rights to adapt Katelyn Monroe Howes’ debut novel The Awoken, which is publishing this week.The U.S.
studio arm of Israel’s Keshet International is planning to turn the book, which Insecure star Issa Rae has called “phenomenal,” into a returning drama series and is understood to be looking for a showrunner to helm the project.Published this week from Dutton, Penguin Random House, The Awoken is billed as a “high-stakes, adrenaline-fueled” romantic story about “a chilling, all-too-plausible future” in which a woman with terminal cancer undergoes cryogenic preservation as her only hope for a second chance, leaving behind the love of her life.
When she wakes up a century later, she discovers a world where her very life is now a crime.The synopsis reads: “When Alabine Rivers, a politically active young woman with a bright career and romance ahead of her, discovers she has terminal cancer, the only thing that gives her solace is the possibility of a second life through the emerging field of cryogenics.
A century later, scientists have discovered how to bring the cryogenically frozen back to life, but humanity is locked in a philosophical battle over the ethics of this new God-like power, a battle that has turned violent: those who are resurrected, the Awoken, have been declared illegal and are to be shot on sight.” Howes, an award-winning, LA-based writer and Emmy-nominated documentarian, is adapting the series for television herself.
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