Hulu Orders Nuyorican Sibling Drama Pilot ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ With Xochitl Gonzalez and Alfonso Gómez-Rejón Producing

Mónica Marie Zorrilla
·2 min read

Hulu has ordered a one-hour drama pilot titled “Olga Dies Dreaming,” based on the yet-to-be-published novel of the same name. Author Xochitl Gonzalez and Alfonso Gómez-Rejón are attached to executive produce, with Gonzalez writing, and Gómez-Rejón directing. Twentieth Television will produce.

Per the logline, “Olga Dies Dreaming” is the story of a Nuyorican brother and sister from a gentrifying Sunset Park, Brooklyn, reckoning with their absent, politically radical mother and their glittering careers among New York City’s elite in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

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Gonzalez will be making her small-screen debut as a writer and as an executive producer. A native Brooklynite and “proud public school graduate,” Gonzalez received her B.A. in fine art from Brown University and is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she is an Iowa Arts Fellow and the recipient of the Michener Copernicus Award for Fiction. Prior to beginning her MFA, Gonzalez was an entrepreneur and strategic consultant for nearly 15 years. In 2019, she won the Disquiet Literary Prize, and her work has been published by Vogue, The Cut, Ninth Letter and Joyland Magazine. “Olga Dies Dreaming,” her debut novel, was sold to Flatiron Books after a ten-way auction and is slated for release on Jan. 11, 2022. Gonzalez is repped for both publishing and film/TV by CAA and André Des Rochers of Granderson Des Rochers, LLP.

Gómez-Rejón is an Emmy-nominated and Sundance-winning filmmaker best known for directing “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” starring Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke and RJ Cyler, as well as directing “The Current War: Director’s Cut” and directing an episode of Amazon’s “Hunters,” which he also executive produced. He partnered with Gonzalez after reading her novel in manuscript form. Together, they developed the series from the ground up. Gómez-Rejón is repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham.

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