Filmmaker Issa Rae has built her career in writing and directing comedies. She first rose to public attention through her comedic web series Awkward Black Girl, which was later picked up by HBO and made into a popular television series. Rae was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy series for her role in the show’s second season.
Now, according to Deadline, Rae is turning her attentions to a more dramatic project. Issa Rae’s production company ColorCreative.TV has bought up a series called The Awoken and is now pitching it to various broadcasters in the hopes of bringing the project to national televisions soon.
The Awoken is a dystopian sci-fi centered on a character named Alabine Rivers who is reawaken in the year 2103 from her original life in the year 201. She is then thrust into a lifestyle of an underground rebel, fighting for the benefit of other “Awoken” beings who have been transported from the past to the futuristic year 2103. Rae has hopes that the series will be highly appealing to networks of all kinds due to the fact that the series could operate with different budget levels.
Creator of The Awoken, Katelyn Howes, won a contest run by Rae’s production company called “the Fresh Wave scheme” that was dedicated to finding new, up and coming voices in the industry. Howes has since expressed her excitement that her story was chosen and called it an “amazing opportunity.”
Howes went on to say, “The producers and mentors of Fresh Wave have provided a thoughtful and unique program that has allowed a female created sci-fi world to come to life. With The Awoken, I set out to write about privilege and how you can only really see it once it’s taken away. It’s a story about growing up. It’s a story about memory. And of course, at it’s heart, it’s a story about love.”
Rae screened a 10-minutes segment from the pilot to buyers over this past week. It remains to be seen what network will pick up The Awoken, but if the quality of Rae’s comedic work is any indication, the series is a promising new drama for the future.