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Marvel's Eternals director and Interior Chinatown writer are teaming with Amazon to bring sci-fi classic Consider Phlebas to the screen

The first novel in Iain M. Banks' Culture cycle is being adapted by Amazon MGM Studios

Published on Tue Feb 25 2025

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A classic of sci-fi literature is set to come to the screen with the announcement that Iain M. Banks’ Culture cycle of novels is being adapted for Amazon MGM Studios by the people behind Nomadland and Hulu’s Interior Chinatown.

Deadline has the exclusive that Charles Yu, creator of Interior Chinatown (which he adapted from his own novel), is writing and acting as executive producer on an adaptation of Consider Phlebas, the first book in the Culture series; Chloé Zhao, who directed the Academy Award-winning Nomadland as well as Marvel Studios’ Eternals, is also an executive producer, and the series is coming through her production company Book of Shadows.

The novel, first released in 1987, is a space opera about a war between the Culture and the Iridians; when a Mind — a sentient AI from the Culture — is lost on a distant planet, both sides send agents to retrieve it. As you might expect, complications ensue. The book is the first in a series of ten novels, which came to an end with 2012’s The Hydrogen Sonata, published a year before Banks’ death. (The novels aren’t told in chronological order, however; the Hydrogen Sonata actually takes place hundreds of years before the previous novel, 2010’s Surface Detail.)

The Yu/Zhao adaptation won’t be the first time an adaptation has been attempted for Consider Phlebas; Amazon and Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company were working on one back in 2018 that ultimately never made it to the screen, with Prime Video instead choosing to concentrate on a number of other genre shows, including The Boys, The Wheel of Time, and others.

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.