Skip to main content

This 2023 best seller is being adapted for TV with an acclaimed director attached

Yellowface is a literary satire, and now that satire is getting translated over to television.

The cover of the Yellowface novel.
William Morrow

One of the buzziest novels released in 2023 is coming to television. Variety is reporting that the R.F. Kuang novel Yellowface is being adapted into a scripted series by Lionsgate Television. Even better, director Karyn Kusama is attached to direct and executive produce the series. No writer is currently attached to the project, which will likely take several years to hit screens.

Yellowface became a New York Times best-seller following its release, and is a social satire about the modern publishing industry.

Recommended Videos

The official logline states: “After watching friend and literary rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, June Hayward steals the only copy of Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, passing off the experimental novel about Chinese laborers during WWI as her own. Newly styled as ‘Juniper Song,’ June rides high until the escalating consequences of her con threaten to crash down around her.”

Kusama is a particularly exciting choice to direct the project, in part because her previous work suggests she is skilled at the tonal balancing that Yellowface will require. She has previously directed movies like Jennifer’s BodyThe Invitation, and Destroyer, and she also recently directed an episode of Yellowjackets.

Given the tremendous success and acclaim of the book, it seemed like only a matter of time before it got optioned for either movie or television. Now, fans of the novel will have to wait and see whether the adaptation can live up to the source material it’s based on. Plenty of great books have made for great series, but just as many have landed with a thud because they couldn’t capture what made the novel special.

Joe Allen
Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…
The Oscars could have a new TV home starting in 2029
This comes after the first live stream of the Oscars with Disney was filled with technical issues.
Jimmy Kimmel hosting the 2024 Oscars.

The 2025 Oscars are now in the books, and they came complete with an experiment in streaming the awards for the first time. The ceremony has aired on ABC for decades, and this year, it was also streamed on Hulu, complete with an abrupt ending before the ceremony was even over.

Now, Deadline is reporting that the Oscars will have a new TV home in the near future. The Academy's negotiating window with ABC has lapsed, which means that they are now free to shop the ceremony to other studios. The licensing fee was apparently the main reason that negotiations broke down. When ABC inked its last deal in 2016, they agreed to pay $100 million a year for the ceremony. That deal is set to lapse following the 2028 ceremony.

Read more
An Emmy winner and Marvel star is set to headline Apple TV’s latest dark comedy
The show comes from the creator of Apple's 'Sugar'
Tatiana Maslany in STronger

As Apple TV+ continues to coast off of the incredible success of Severance, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Orphan Black and She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany will star in a darkly comic series coming the streamer. The series, which is called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, was created by David J. Rosen, who previously created Apple TV+'s Sugar and Amazon's Hunters.

The show is described as "a darkly comic thriller about a newly divorced mom (Maslany) who falls down a dangerous rabbit hole of blackmail, murder and youth soccer."

Read more
The 7 best cult TV shows to add to your watchlist
Quirky comedies and sci-fi dramas features heavily in cult TV culture

A lot of TV shows reach mainstream popularity to the point where they belong to everyone. No matter how much you might love Breaking Bad, there's someone out there with just one more Walter White poster on their bedroom wall (yes, even the adults do this.) Friends is the comfort drama every Millenial puts on the screen when they're down in the dumps on a rainy Saturday afternoon in February. These are some of the most famous series ever put on the small screen, often so popular it becomes nauseating.

We want to focus on the shows that are a little more niche, the ones that were popular amongst pockets of the TV populace but never reached the wide audiences of the shows mentioned above. We refer to these classics as cult TV shows, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Some cult TV series make you laugh with weird characters. Others are dramas in obscure categories like sci-fi or LGBTQ+ historical epics. These are the best cult TV shows you need to check out and join the rabid fandoms of.

Read more