Amazon are developing a TV show based on Iain M. Banks' CULTURE novels.
Jeff Bezos himself delivered the news via Twitter. It's the latest in a line of high-profile announcements by Amazon TV, which has already greenlit a LORD OF THE RINGS prequel TV show which will comfortably be the most expensive TV show in history, and they are also working on a TV series based on Robert E. Howard's CONAN THE BARBARIAN character. They are also working on mini-series adaptations of Larry Niven's novel RINGWORLD and Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH.
The new TV project will start off with an adaptation of the first novel in the setting, CONSIDER PHLEBAS. It's unclear if the plan will be to adapt each of the nine novels in the series, which will make it something of an anthology as there are no continuing characters in the book, where each novel is separated from the rest by hundreds of light-years and often hundreds of years of history.
I can't even imagine trying to do this for TV or it coming out at all well.
The CG requirements for CONSIDER PHLEBAS are flat-out utterly insane. It's only the fact that Bezos is personally involved and he has so much money he launches space rockets for fun that makes me think they'll be able to pull it off.
I very much doubt they'll get enough viewers for a second season though. CONSIDER PHLEBAS is a witheringly sarcastic put-down and satire of American boo-yar space operas which makes for a very interesting novel, but I can't imagine it working as well on TV.
Gridfire or GTFO
I do wonder if 'Molests organic beings' (A more SFW version of it's name) will pop up.