Amazon resurrects CULTURE TV project, based on the Iain M. Banks novels

Amazon have decided to have a second go at adapting the Culture series of science fiction novels by the late Scottish author Iain M. Banks.

Amazon previously put an adaptation into development in 2018, with Jeff Bezos himself - a huge fan of the series - ordering work to begin. Dennis Kelly (Utopia) was in charge, with a guaranteed season order apparently in the works if the scripts were good. However, the project appeared to stall and was then cancelled in 2020, after the Banks Estate themselves withdrew from negotiations. Speculation at the time was that Banks, an avowed socialist, may have not been keen on working with the ultimate capitalist enterprise, and perhaps the Estate belatedly realised that. However, other reports suggested a more obvious explanation: Amazon was adapting The Expanse at the time and may have not had the appetite for airing two space opera shows simultaneously, even if they are remarkably different in tone and setting.

Apparently, with The Expanse concluded for now, the earlier project may be back on. This time Amazon has teamed with Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals) to develop a new take on the idea. Yu will showrun whilst Zhao will executive produce and may direct; Zhao is also developing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer legacy sequel show with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

As with the previous project, this adaptation will begin by adapting Consider Phlebas (1987), the first-published novel in the series. The other books may follow. Consider Phlebas sees the Culture, a post-scarcity utopian society, and the expansionist Idiran Empire clashing for control of a Culture Mind, an ultra-advanced AI, that has taken refuge on a forbidden planet. The protagonist is Horza, a shapeshifting mercenary working for the Idirans. In a 1995 magazine interview, Banks said (possibly joking) that he'd have cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role himself.

The Culture is something of an anthology project, with each novel and story having its own setting, cast of characters and storyline, with only passing references to the other stories, with sometimes centuries and thousands of light-years separating the different stories. Banks published ten Culture books in total, each with a very different tone: Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. This means that Amazon would not necessarily have to adapt each book in rapid turn, and could choose what order to approach the project in.

Banks wrote mainstream fiction under the name "Iain Banks" and science fiction under the name "Iain M. Banks" (a conceit which became a running gag in the Simon Pegg and Edgar wright movie Hot Fuzz), publishing twenty-eight books in total between 1984 and his untimely death from cancer in 2013.