Daniel Dae Kim‘s 3AD and BOOM! Studios are developing Arash Amel, Marguerite Bennett, Antonio Fuso, and Stefano Simeone’s spy thriller graphic novel Butterfly as a new dramatic TV series for Amazon Studios, with Daniel Dae Kim attached to star. Ken Woodruff (The Mentalist, Gotham) is co-writing and co-creating the adaptation with acclaimed Korean-American novelist Steph Cha, whose 2019 novel Your House Will Pay won the LA Times Book Award. The series will be Amazon’s first original production to shoot in South Korea, with the streamer eyeing a fall 2023 start date.
Butterfly is a character-driven spy thriller that explores complex family dynamics within the treacherous world of global espionage. It centers on David Jung, an enigmatic, highly unpredictable former US intelligence operative living in South Korea, whose life is blown to pieces when the consequences of an impossible decision from his past come back to haunt him, and he finds himself pursued by Rebecca, a deadly, sociopathic young agent assigned to kill him.
Butterfly is based on the 2015 BOOM! Studios/Archaia graphic novel created by Amel, written by Amel and Bennett, and illustrated by Fuso and Simeone.
Woodruff and Cha will executive produce the project with Woodruff showrunning. Daniel and John Cheng are executive producers for 3AD. Stephen Christy and Ross Richie are executive producers for BOOM! Studios and Adam Yoelin serves as co-executive producer. Amel is executive producing through The Amel Company.
3AD was established by Daniel in 2015 to produce premier content for TV, film and digital media. Committed to storytelling featuring characters and cultures traditionally underrepresented, 3AD produced projects include the hit series The Good Doctor (ABC / Sony) and the critically acclaimed documentary film, Bad Axe. Led by Daniel and Head of Development, Cheng, the company is currently under a first-look TV deal with Amazon Studios.
Amel is the screenwriter of the critically lauded motion picture A Private War, and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, slated to shoot in February 2023 with Guy Ritchie directing and Jerry Bruckheimer producing.
Woodruff is the creator and executive producer of The Enemy Within, as well as executive producer of Gotham and La Brea, which was just renewed for a third season on NBC.
Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Praise for Butterfly:
“Intrigue and explosions galore…with a modern Jason Bourne-type secret agent and a Cold War covert operative a là John le Carré…”—USA TODAY
“In a lot of ways this comic is like a really good song…”—AIPT
“At times my mind wandered to the Metal Gear series…Butterfly begins telling Rebecca’s tale, but ends up being more about her father’s ambitions for a better world…”—Slug Magazine
