Amazon Developing Sci-Fi Series ‘The Cleaners’ From ‘The OA’s Dominic Orlando, Orlando Bloom & Ken Liu

Peter White
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: A sci-fi short story, written by Ken Liu, is being developed as a television series for Amazon by The OA writer Dominic Orlando with Orlando Bloom as exec producer.

The Cleaners tells how, in the near future, inanimate objects carry the memories of people’s experiences, and a certain number of the population have the ability to relive those memories by touch. Cleaners are specialists hired to sanitize the objects and relieve emotional burdens these memories may hold. At the center of this story is a young man who inherits his family’s cleaning business, and takes on a mysterious new commission.

The story, which is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and The Pea, is part of Faraway, a collection of retold fairy tales that is set to be published on December 15 from Amazon Original Stories.

The series is produced by Amazon Studios in association with Bloom’s Amazing Owl with Bloom and Adam Karasick exec producing alongside Orlando and Liu.

The project comes after Carnival Row star Bloom expanded his relationship with the streamer and signed a first-look deal. It is the second series that he has in development with Amazon after he teamed up on a series with Jared Genser, the human rights lawyer known as The Extractor, who has helped free political prisoners in hot zones around the world.

Dominic Orlando has written on Netflix’s The OA and Mindhunter and is currently serving as co-executive producer and writer on the upcoming Amazon original series Outer Range from Plan B and Amazon Studios, and was most recently a writer and producer on Amazon’s Them.

Ken Liu is the author of numerous short stories as well as fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, published by Simon & Schuster. He translated Chinese sci-fi book series The Three Body Problem, which is being adapted by the Game of Thrones creators for Netflix. His short story The Message is being developed as a feature film by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment, while Good Hunting became an episode of Netflix’s animated series Love, Death + Robots and AMC’s Pantheon is adapted from his interconnected series of short stories.

Orlando is represented by Adam Peck of Synchronicity Management. Bloom is repped by Curtis Brown and ICM Partners. Liu is represented by Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company.

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