Nnedi Okorafor and Binti. Image by Colleen Durkin, courtesy of DAW, for The Hollywood Reporter.

The American network Hulu has ordered a TV series adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor‘s novella Binti, reports The Hollywood Reporter. The show, to be run by former HBO executive Michael Ellenberg and his Media Res studio, will have its script co-written by the Naijamerican novelist and the screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour, whose credits include HBO’s Watchmen and Apple’s The Morning Show. It will be executive-produced by Okorafor, Ellenberg, and Osei-Kuffour, and co-executive-produced by Dani Gorin.

For the deal, Okorafor is represented by William Morris Endeavour, the Gotham Group, and Darren Trattner.

Published in 2015, Binti, the first in a trilogy that includes Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade, won Okorafor both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella. It inspired a 2016 futuristic photography series by the artist Olalekan Jeyifous.

Here is a synopsis:

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself ― but first she has to make it there, alive.

Since 2017, when HBO announced the George R.R. Martin-produced TV adaptation of her novella Who Fears Death, Okorafor, whose new memoir Broken Places and Outer Spaces was one of our Notable Books of 2019, has entered the Hollywood scene in style. In 2018, she attended the Emmys with Martin. In 2019, news broke that she and Wanuri Kahiu are co-writing a film script for Octavia Butler’s novel Wild Seed, which will be produced by Viola Davis. And shortly after, she announced that she was creating a TV production company called Africanfuturism Productions, Inc. It is not yet known if the company is involved in the Hulu deal.

Brittle Paper congratulates Nnedi Okorafor.