Irish director Neasa Hardiman and actor Eoin Lynch have joined the cast and crew of Amazon’s upcoming 10-part adaptation of Naiomi Alderman’s best-selling feminist Sci-Fi novel, The Power.
A BAFTA and IFTA-winning director, Hardiman will be the final of four female directors to take the helm on the series alongside Ugla Hauksdóttir and Shannon Murphy, with Primetime Emmy-winning director Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale) leading the production.
“Naomi’s story is like nothing I’ve seen and made me feel things so viscerally that I have honestly never felt,”Morano told Variety. “I cannot wait to dig deep with Naomi, Sister Pictures, and Amazon Studios into this profound and masterful vision of the complex dynamics of our world reversed.”
Hardiman, whose credits include BBC’s Happy Valley and Netflix’s Jessica Jones, debuted her last feature film Sea Fever at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.
Lynch (Poldark/Single Handed) will feature on the show playing the role of Little Frank, along with names such as Leslie Mann, John Leguizamo, and Tim Robbins. The series is being produced by Sister Pictures (Chernobyl) and executive produced by naomi Alderman, Naomi de Pear, and Jane Featherstone. The latest UK Prime Original drama will be produced by Tim Bricknell and will debut on Amazon Prime Video internationally.
The Power depicts a world where teenage girls discover they have the ability to electrocute others, the norms of society are thrown into disarray where men live in fear of women. The story is set across four main locations Seattle, Nigeria, London and Moldova, as knowledge of this new power spreads across the world, teenagers realise that they can also awaken the power in older women, leading to a shift in dominance between the genders.
Alderman’s book, which won the 2017 Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, was longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize, and made President Barack Obama’s list of favourite books that year.
Currently filming in London and South Africa under the strict Covid restrictions the series is due for release later this year.