Advanced Television

Leslie Mann to star in Amazon Prime Video’s The Power

October 31, 2019

Amazon Studios has announced that Leslie Mann (The Other Woman / This Is 40) will star in the ten-part global thriller, The Power, based on award-winning Naomi Alderman’s international best-selling novel of the same name. Mann will play the charming and ambitious politician Margot Cleary-Lopez in the series.

The Power is produced by Sister (Chernobyl, Giri/Haji, The Split) and directed by Emmy award-winner Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale), and will premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in over 200 countries and territories.

The Power has been adapted for screen by creator and Executive Producer Naomi Alderman, working with an incredible line-up of all-female writers including co-executive producer Claire Wilson (Rocks, Little Drummer Girl, Gangs of London), co-executive producer and story consultant Sarah Quintrell (Ellen, The Trial: A Murder in the Family), Whit Anderson (Ozark, Daredevil), Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen, PEN15) and novelist Rebecca Levene (The Hollow Gods Trilogy).

The world of The Power is our world, but for one twist of nature. Suddenly, and without warning, all teenage girls in the world develop the power to electrocute people at will. It’s hereditary, it’s inbuilt, and it can’t be taken away from them. Coming alive to the thrill of pure power: the ability to hurt or even kill by releasing electrical jolts from their fingertips, they rapidly learn they can awaken the Power in older women. Soon enough nearly every woman in the world can do it. And then everything is different.

The subversive, multi-stranded narrative follows a series of characters including  Allie, a vulnerable American foster kid who reinvents herself as a faith leader;  Roxy, the daughter of a London crime boss, who revels in her new abilities; Tunde, a Nigerian journalist reporting on seismic global change; and Margot Cleary – Lopez (Leslie Mann), Mayor of Seattle; loving wife and doting mother to three kids. At least that’s what her official campaign website would tell you.

Margot is an American politician on the rise and until now, not only a woman in a man’s world, but one with a questionable taste in jackets according to online trolls. Vital, charming and incredibly smart, Margot comes to see that power resides with strength rather than authority. As her career takes flight, it’s her husband Rob and daughter Jos who privately feel the effects of her success most keenly; for one of them, where previously there was conflict now comes a greater understanding, and for the other where there was love, comes hurt and betrayal.

Over the first season, the series will follow its cast of remarkable characters from London to Seattle, Nigeria to Moldova, as the ‘Power’ evolves from a tingle in teenagers’ collarbones to a complete reversal of the power balance of the world. The Day of the Girls has arrived – but where will it end?

Naomi Alderman’s novel, The Power, was included in President Barack Obama’s list of his favourite books from 2017 and went on to win the 2017 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as being longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize. Already translated into more than twenty-five languages, The Power has found global appeal across the world.

The Power is produced by Sister and executive produced by Jane Featherstone (Chernobyl/Giri/Haji, The Split), Naomi de Pear (Don’t Forget the Driver, The Bisexual, Flowers), Naomi Alderman, and Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale). The series is produced by Tim Bricknell (Trust, Taboo) and is the latest UK produced Amazon Original series.

The Power will join the thousands of TV shows and movies in the Prime Video catalogue, including UK produced Amazon Original series such as Good Omens, The Grand Tour and All or Nothing: Manchester City, and award winning and critically acclaimed global Amazon Original series including Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Boys, Homecoming and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, all on Prime Video, which is available at no extra cost for Prime members.

 

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