Kinetic Content Lands Grady Hendrix’s ‘BadAsstronauts’ Novella For TV

EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Kinetic Content has landed the rights to Grady Hendrix’s forthcoming sci-fi comedic novella BadAsstronauts to develop as a half-hour television series, with Aperture Entertainment.

Described as The Right Stuff meets King of the Hill, BadAsstronauts is about ordinary Americans trying to accomplish an extraordinary, and very stupid, and also extremely dangerous task: launching a manned backyard rocket into space to rescue their abandoned friend.

Hendrix and Aperture Entertainment Founder Adam Goldworm will executive produce the series adaptation with Kinetic Content CEO Chris Coelen and President and Partner Melissa Myers.

The book’s official logline reads in part: “Melville, South Carolina was out of money, it was out of jobs, it was out of hope, and today it was out of astronauts. There were only two to begin with, and now one is stuck on the abandoned International Space Station after his mission went south. With NASA’s budget cut to the bone, there’s no one to bring him back home. But his cousin Walter isn’t going to let that happen. Tanked on vodka, living on a “farm” whose only crop is cars on cinderblocks, Walter’s a wash-out from the Shuttle Program and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let his cousin die in the sky like a dog.”

“I wanted to write a book where people stepped up and took back their future, a book where people who’d been crushed by the economy used engineering and the good old American superpowers of Building Shit and Banging On Things with Wrenches to weave a magic spell that changed the world,” said Hendrix.

BadAsstronauts will be published April 19 as an ebook and in print and audio formats. Recorded Books is doing the audio edition featuring the voice of Ezra Buzzington (Justified). Print and ebook editions are published by JAB Books.

“Inspired by the uplifting, unifying nature of Ted Lasso, we wanted to take a show populated with the everyday American characters of King of the Hill but give it life or death stakes, ultimately reminding us that it’s still possible to accomplish the impossible,” added Goldworm. “Think Gravity with more beer.”

Hendrix’s latest novel The Final Girl Support Group is set up at HBO Max with Charlize Theron producing alongside the Muschiettis and Aperture Entertainment. His Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires was sold to Amazon Studios in a ten-buyer bidding war. Hendrix is currently adapting his novel Horrorstör for New Republic and Aperture, and a feature adaptation of his novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism is in post at Amazon.

Kinetic, which recently got into scripted content, also is adapting the novel Seven Days in June for television with Will Packer Media.

Hendrix is repped by Aperture Entertainment, Danny Passman of Gang Tyre, and Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky. Goldworm is repped by attorney Ashley Silver at Brecheen, Feldman, Breimer, Silver and Thompson.