HBO Max Developing Dystopian Thriller ‘In Memoriam’ With Participant

Deadline

By Peter White

EXCLUSIVE: Imagine a world where humans lose the capacity to store long-term recollections and instead are issued a government memory chip. This is the world of In Memoriam, a new drama in development at HBO Max.

The series comes from rising British playwright Charley Miles and Mr Robot director Niels Arden Oplev. Produced by Buccaneer Media, whose Anna Friel-fronted drama Marcella is in its third season at Netflix, and Participant, the thriller is a returnable, serialised series set in the UK. Miles, who was the Channel 4 Playwright-in-Residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2017, writes and Oplev, who also helmed the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie, directs.

The story is set in the near future. Whilst humanity was busy uploading photos to the cloud and digitising every book ever written, the human brain was quietly evolving, and we lost the capacity to store long-term memory. But Britain’s National Health Service developed the cure: a government-issued memory chip. When 17-year-old Somalia finds her mum dead on their living room floor, she makes an unprecedented, and criminal, decision to implant her mother’s memory chip. Somalia’s search for identity sends her spiraling into an underground world of digital militants and authoritarian dispute, until she finds herself at the heart of a conspiracy; one that will unite her mother’s past and the dark origins of this scientific breakthrough.

Executive Producers are Richard Tulk-Hart, Tony Wood and Anna Burns for Buccaneer Media and Participant’s Jeff Skoll and Miura Kite.

It is Participant’s latest TV series following Steve James’ 10-part docuseries America to Me, and Ava DuVernay’s Netflix limited drama series, When They See Us. Read More.