James S. A. Corey / Hachette
Amazon is going back to outer space with a brand new science fiction universe, based on a new work by the creators of The Expanse.
Amazon MGM Studios has signed a development deal with Expanding Universe, a new multi-platform production company founded by authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, executive producer Naren Shankar, and director Breck Eisner. Their first project is The Captive’s War, an adaptation of Abraham and Franck’s newest sci-fi universe.
Inspired by the biblical book of Daniel, The Captive’s War “follows a group of prisoners who rise from the ashes of catastrophe to destroy their conqueror’s society from within.” The first book in the new series is The Mercy of Gods, which became a New York Times bestseller when it was published in August 2024. It tells the story of the abduction of a group of humans by a militant insectoid species called the Carryx — seemingly in parallel to ancient Israel’s captivity in Babylon.
A planned trilogy of novels as well as other works will build out the new universe. The first of those is the novella Livesuit, published in October as a digital e-book.
Shankar will write and executive produce the new TV show, with Abraham and Franck also writing and Eisner directing.
The group also has their eyes on more than television production. “The Expanse was originally created to be a video game, then it became an RPG, then a novel, then a show, and then a couple of video games,” Franck said. “In a way, it was a roadmap for how Expanding Universe is developing projects now.”
Abraham and Franck write together under the pen name James S. A. Corey, whose series The Expanse spans nine novels and another ten novellas and short stories. The first six books were adapted as The Expanse television series, which ran for three seasons on Syfy Channel before moving to Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service for another three seasons. Abraham and Franck also served as writers on the show, which was executive produced by Naren Shankar.
Shankar got his start alongside Stargate‘s Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright on MGM’s 1990s reboot of The Outer Limits. From there he went on to work on Farscape, CSI, Grimm, The Expanse, and For All Mankind.
The Expanse (Amazon Prime Video)
The name of their new production company, Expanding Universe, is a tip of the hat to the Hugo Award-winning series that brought them together. The group has evidently already begun taking pitches from other creatives, and has its eye on certain unnamed “legacy IP.”
Abraham said: “Our track record has already attracted some exciting material: original features, adaptations by other novelist’s work, and even legacy IPs which would be a blast to reimagine in a modern context. In success, we have the opportunity to bring a new generation of science fiction to the screen.”
(Might that include Stargate, which Amazon owns but hasn’t been able to get back into production since its 2022 acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer? We’ve heard that fellow Expanse producers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby were previously in the mix to develop a new Stargate project for Amazon.)
“Expanding Universe is focused on developing sci-fi narratives with sweeping world-building and elevated storylines, geared toward multi-platform expressions in filmed entertainment, gaming, and publishing,” Eisner said. “The Captive’s War is a perfect launchpad for our model.”
The company is planning to announce additional projects in the near future. As The Expanse is hands-down one of the best works of science fiction in the past decade, we’ll be watching with great anticipation.