Shonda Rhimes & Matt Reeves Developing Recursion Franchise for Netflix

Netflix has scored the rights to Blake Crouch’s new book Recursion for Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers’ Shondaland and Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho to develop as a feature film as well as a TV universe.

Billed as a save-the-world sci-fi thriller, an epic romance and an intricate police procedural, Recursion explores what happens when a brilliant female scientist invents a powerful technology that allows people not just to reactivate their most visceral memories but to reinvent them entirely. For some, it offers the chance to rewrite their entire lives. In the wrong hands, it will upend the world as we know it.

Crouch is the author of The New York Times best-selling novel Dark Matter, for which he also wrote the script for Sony. His Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted and aired for two seasons as a limited event TV series. His most recent project, Good Behavior, based on his novellas, just finished its second season on TNT.

“Projects like this are why I came to Netflix,” said Rhimes. “The opportunity to explore a multi-genre universe in innovative ways is extremely exciting. Matt and Blake both have the tremendous ability to build compelling characters and imaginative landscapes and I am thrilled to work alongside them.”

“Blake’s mind-bending novel presents an incredible opportunity to explore its expansive narrative simultaneously through both film and television,” said Reeves. “Netflix is uniquely suited for this ambitious undertaking and I can’t imagine a more exciting partner than the astonishingly talented Shonda Rhimes whose work I have admired for years.”

“I have been a fan of Shonda’s and Matt’s work going back years,” added Crouch. “To have these titans of television and film working on something of mine is an incredible honor, and Netflix is the pitch-perfect home for people who want to adapt film and TV in the most innovative way possible.”