FX/Hulu's First Kindred Miniseries Teaser Plays Up Horror Elements

[embedded content] An adaptation of Octavia Butler's classic 1979 novel comes to FX with Kindred.

First published in 1979, science fiction author Octavia Butler's bestselling novel Kindred defies conventional genres, incorporating classic tropes of travel into the time, tales of Antebellum South slaves, and historical fiction. Butler herself described it as "a kind of dark fantasy". Over 40 years later, Kindred is now an eight-episode TV miniseries, coming to Hulu next month, and now we have our first look via a 90-second teaser.

(Spoilers for the 1979 novel below.)

Butler's novel is told from the first-person perspective of a young black writer named Dana, who moves to Los Angeles with her husband Kevin in 1976. On her 26th birthday, Dana suddenly becomes dizzy and the walls of their home in LA fade away. She finds herself at the edge of a wood near a river and quickly rescues a young red-haired boy named Rufus Weylin. Another vertigo quickly brings her back to her present, but the attacks continue, and soon Dana is being transported back and forth steadily, for varying lengths of time. (Time passes more quickly in the past, further complicating matters.) She quickly learns that she must make certain compromises and cruelties she must endure in order to navigate the Antebellum South. Eventually Kevin finds himself transported to the same time period as well and must learn to navigate the Antebellum South as a white man.

While no cause or mechanism is ever offered for Dana's time travel, we eventually learn that there is a historical connection: young Rufus is actually Dana's ancestor. His time travels initially occur whenever the accident-prone boy needs rescuing - and, understandably invested in preserving his family lineage and future existence, Dana saves his life on several occasions. But as Rufus grows, things get more complicated. He succeeds his father as master of the plantation and ends up raping his childhood friend Alice (born free but later sold into slavery as punishment) and forces her to become his concubine. One of their children is Dana's ancestor, Hagar.

Enlarge / Dana James (Mallori Johnson) travels back in time to save a young boy named Rufus (David Alexander Kaplan). YouTube/FX

Kindred sold over a million copies after publication; it is a complicated novel with multiple themes and arguably Butler's most influential and acclaimed work. There was a graphic novel adaptation in 2017, but for some reason it was never made into a film or television – until now. FX ordered a pilot for the miniseries last July and picked up Kindred for a full series in January. According to the official login line: "As Dana, a young black woman and aspiring writer, begins to settle into her new home, she finds herself pulled back and forth in time, emerging on a 19th-century plantation. and confronting secrets she would never have known through her blood."

Newcomer Mallori Johnson (We Crashed) stars as Dana, with Micah Stock (Deke Slayton on The Right Stuff series) as Kevin . Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) plays Thomas Weylin; Gayle Rankin (Sheila the Wolf in Glow) plays his wife, Margaret Weylin; and David Alexander Kaplan ("12" in Stranger Things S4) plays young Rufus. Looks like FX/Hulu is sticking to the late 1970s...