Netflix: Altered Carbon

[keg in kc]

Another one of my favorite book series coming to television in the hopefully-not-too-distant future, this time Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, which begins with Altered Carbon. It's a very, very adult science fiction noir about a former soldier turned detective in a future where you can basically body hop using technology. Obviously a lot more to it than that, but that's the nutshell. Really, really good stuff. I think Netflix is potentially a perfect home for it, after seeing what they've done with some more mature stuff like Jessica Jones.

Netflix Orders ‘Altered Carbon’ Sci-Fi Series From Laeta Kalogridis & Skydance

by Nellie Andreeva
Deadline Hollywood
January 20, 2016 9:00am

Netflix has picked up Altered Carbon, a futuristic drama series conceived, written and executive produced by Laeta Kalogridis (Avatar, Shutter Island, Terminator Genesis). The project, which has received a 10-episode order, is based on Richard Morgan’s award-winning 2002 cyberpunk sci-fi novel of the same name. Skydance Television, which produces Netflix comedy Grace and Frankie, is the studio.

This has been a longtime passion project of Kalogridis. She acquired rights to Altered Carbon as well as the other books in Morgan’s “Takeshi Kovacs” series four years ago through Mythology Entertainment, the company she had launched with partners Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt.

Altered Carbon is set in the 25th century when the human mind has been digitized and the soul itself is transferable from one body to the next. Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite interstellar warrior known as an Envoy who has been imprisoned for 500 years, is downloaded into a future he’d tried to stop. If he can solve a single murder in a world where technology has made death nearly obsolete, he’ll get a chance at a new life on Earth.

Kalogridis had written a screenplay on spec with David H. Goodman, which they’d tried to sell for years. It is now being made as a TV series by Netflix and Skydance, though Goodman is not available to work on the show.

“Altered Carbon is one of the most seminal pieces of post-cyberpunk hard science fiction out there — a dark, complex noir story that challenges our ideas of what it means to be human when all information becomes encodable, including the human mind,” Kalogridis said at the time of the book acquisition.

Kalogridis serves as executive producer/showrunner. Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross executive produce, with Fischer, Vanderbilt, House alums Russel Friend & Garrett Lerner as well as Mike Medavoy and Arnie Messer also getting a producing credit.

Kalogridis is repped by WME. Alan Nevins of Renaissance Literary & Talent repped Orion Publishing Groupin the sale of Altered Carbon rights to Mythology Entertainment and then to Skydance.