‘Station Eleven’: Hiro Murai’s Next TV Directing Gig Is Adapting a Post-Apocalyptic Novel
In the five years since it was published, Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” has been one of the top “Why isn’t this a movie or show yet?” books around. Now, “Station Eleven” is part of a pair of new additions to the ever-expanding WarnerMedia streaming service content landscape.
To sweeten the deal, this adaptation of the 2014 post-apocalyptic novel has slated Hiro Murai as a director. It would be Murai’s first pilot since “Atlanta,” which coupled with the director’s extensive music video work, made him a sought-after filmmaker across TV. Murai has since directed episodes of “Barry,” “Snowfall,” and “Legion,” in addition to the Donald Glover-starring surprise Amazon release “Guava Island” earlier this year.
Told across various time periods and following multiple main characters, “Station Eleven” tracks the remnants of human society after a deadly flu ravages the global population. A roving group of actors, the cast of a doomed Shakespeare production, and inhabitants of an airport make up a few of the interweaving storylines that all somehow trace their way back to the start of the plague.
This new “Station Eleven” show, which comes with a planned 10-episode first season, is one of two new planned series from “Maniac” creator (and writer on that pretty good HBO show about loss and grief that we may have covered once or twice before) Patrick Somerville.
The second series is “Made for Love,” based on Alice Nutting’s recent novel about a woman looking to escape a restrictive, tech-enforced marriage by moving in with her father in a remote trailer park. “Collateral” and impending “Star Trek” sequel director S.J. Clarkson is on board the project as a director. Somerville will serve as showrunner on both “Made for Love” and “Station Eleven.”
Both shows join the WarnerMedia original content collection, which also includes the upcoming romantic anthology series “Love Life,” produced by Paul Feig and starring Anna Kendrick. The recent news of J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot’s overall deal with the company will no doubt lead to additional programming announcements for the streaming service in the weeks and months to come.
