FX has landed rights to Ayad Akhtar’s acclaimed novel Homeland Elegies, which it’s developing as a limited series. Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick, Eternals) is attached to star and executive produce.
The Disney-owned cable outlet won the rights after outbidding multiple other interested parties. FX Productions will produce the eight-episode drama, with Akhtar adapting his book and Oren Moverman (The Messenger, HBO’s Bad Education) set to direct.
Homeland Elegies made numerous best-of lists for 2020. The novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Akhtar blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of identity and belonging in post-Trump America. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Nanjiani, an Oscar nominee for co-writing The Big Sick, is currently filming the Star Wars series Obi-Wan for Disney+. He’s in the cast for Marvel’s Eternals, due in theaters Nov. 5, and is set to play Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee in a Hulu limited series.
Akhtar, Nanjiani and Moverman will executive produce Homeland Elegies with Sight Unseen’s Julia Lebedev and Eddie Vaisman and Nimitt Mankad via Inimitable Pictures.
Akhtar is repped by Lenore Entertainment Group, CAA, the Book Group and Goodman Genow; Moverman by WME and 7 Deuce Entertainment; and Nanjiani by UTA, Mosaic Entertainment and Schreck Rose.
Adam Berkowitz of Lenore Entertainment Group represented the executive producers on the deal, alongside Craig Emmanuel of Paul Hastings for Sight Unseen and Stephen Dembitzer of Dembitzer and Dembitzer for Inimitable Pictures.
Deadline first reported the news.
