‘Chernobyl’ Director Johan Renck, Angryfilms Tackling ‘Day of the Triffids’ Adaptation

Move over The Last of Us, there’s a new biological threat sprouting to annihilate mankind.

Johan Renck, who directed the acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl, is attached to helm The Day of the Triffids, an adaptation of the classic British science fiction novel by John Wyndham.

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Amazon Studios picked up the rights to the novel, with Don Murphy and Susan Montford on board to executive produce via their Angryfilms banner. Jillian and Dennis DeFrehn of Preger Entertainment, the novel’s media rights holder, will also executive produce as will Renck and his partner Michael Parets at shingle Sinestra.

The 1951 novel is post-apocalyptic tale of an alien invasion of Earth by a cloud of seeds which sprout sentient plants. A large portion of the population is blinded by a meteor shower in preparation for the invasion and small groups of sighted survivors of different social strata in England vie to survive. The influential novel served as an inspiration on movies such as 28 Days Later.

Sources say that Amazon intends to adapt the book as a string of miniseries, detailing the invasion from multiple points of view in multiple cities.

A writer search is in progress.

Murphy and Montford have been working with Preger for years to bring the book back to the screen. At one point, Luther creator Neil Cross and Sam Raimi were writing and directing, respectively, a feature incarnation for Good Universe and Lionsgate.

Triffids was famously adapted as a movie in 1962, three times as a radio play and twice as a TV mini-series for the BBC, most recently in 2009.

Angryfilm and Preger worked together most recently on the Vampire Academy series that streamed on Peacock last year.

Renck is a commercial and video director who has also worked on series such as Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. He won two Emmys for his work on Chernobyl, HBO’s acclaimed and dramatic look at the 1986 nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, including one for outstanding directing in a limited series.

Chernobyl was created by Craig Mazin, who co-created fungi-killing-humanity series Last of Us, which adapts the popular video game, putting the two on different sides of the post-apocalyptic landscape.

Renck is repped by CAA and UK’s Casarotto Ramsay.

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