The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV Series Is in Development

Grab your towel, sci-fi fans. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is headed to Hulu as a new American television series. Deadline reports that Hulu is developing an adaptation of Douglas Adams’s beloved radio drama turned novel with showrunner Carlton Cuse (Lost, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Locke & Key) and writer Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman, Ice Age: Continental Drift). The series is being developed by ABC Signature, the cable/streaming division of ABC Studios, which has an overall deal with Cuse and his company Genre Arts.

The story of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy follows Arthur Dent, an average British man who gets whisked away from Earth moments before it is destroyed by the bureaucratic aliens called the Vogons. Along with his alien guide Ford Prefect, Dent finds himself on cosmic adventures ripe with British wit and humor.

Cuse and Fuchs will write and executive produce the series. The intellectual property is owned by Disney, which adapted it into a 2005 film starring Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, and Zooey Deschanel and featuring the voices of Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy originated as a British comedy broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 in 1978. Writer Douglas Adams adapted the series into a trilogy of six novels (you read that right). Adams wrote five of the novels before his death in 2001. The sixth novel, And Another Thing…, was written by Eoin Colfer (the Artemis Fowl series) and published on the series’ 30th anniversary in 2008. That novel was then adapted into the radio drama The Hexagonal Phase, which was released in 2018 on the 40th anniversary to the day of the first broadcast of the original Hitchhiker’s Guide radio series.

The series was adapted into television previously in the United Kingdom, where Arthur Dent was played by Simon Jones, who voiced the character in the radio series.

Cuse is keeping busy these days. He also executive producing Netflix’s adaptation of the Locke & Key comic book series. He has a sci-fi western series called Atlas in the works at Amazon Prime and two high-profile, unnamed projects percolating for Disney+. Cuse became known for co-running ABC’s Lost. His other showrunner credits include Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Bates Motel, The Strain, Colony, and The Returned.

Are you excited about Hulu developing a new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy television series? Let us know what you think about it in the comments section.