News Katabasis R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis Already Getting a Prime Video TV Series Adaptation We can all read the book when it comes out on August 26, 2025. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 20, 2025 R.F. Kuang photo by Julian Baumann Comment 0 Share New Share R.F. Kuang photo by Julian Baumann Babel and The Poppy War author R.F. Kuang’s latest novel, Katabasis, isn’t even out yet, but that hasn’t stopped an adaptation of the work from moving forward. According to Variety, Amazon MGM Studios is already developing it into a television series to stream on Prime Video. The project even has a showrunner attached: The Walking Dead alum, Angela Kang. Both Kang and Kuang will executive produce, along with Mandy Safavi, Ben Smith, Jeffrey Weiner, and Adam Docksey. Amazon describes the show as “a dark academia fantasy in which two graduate students in Magick must put aside their rivalry and journey through Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.” Katabasis takes place in an alternate history where “magick” is real and something one can get a Ph.D in from places like Oxford and Cambridge (a recurring premise in Kuang’s work). It revolves around Magick Ph.D. candidate Alice Law, who heads to Hell to retrieve the soul of her abusive advisor at Cambridge, Professor Grimes. Fellow Grimes advisee Peter Murdoch joins her in that journey. Danger and personal introspection ensue as they trek across the realm’s different levels. This isn’t the first work of Kuang’s picked up for adaptation. Back in 2020, we heard that The Poppy War was in development for TV, though that appears to have stalled. Babel is also reportedly in development for adaptation, but we haven’t heard news of that since early 2024. The Katabasis project is still in its early days—it’s not clear if any scripts have been written, much less if there’s been any action on the casting front. In the meantime, we can look forward to reading the novel when it comes out on August 26, 2025. [end-mark] The post R.F. Kuang’s <i>Katabasis</i> Already Getting a Prime Video TV Series Adaptation appeared first on Reactor.