Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ to be adapted into a television series

Just Kids, a memoir written by iconic singer/songwriter Patti Smith, is being turned into a limited series on Showtime. Smith further stated the narrative freedom will be a chance for her to expand the themes of the book.

The artist’s prize-winning memoir of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and other figures of the 60s and 70s – both peripheral and central – has been picked up by Showtime for a limited series.

The cable network announced Tuesday that the book will be made into a limited series, with Penny awful EP John Logan set to co-write and produce along with Smith. Her bestselling memoir Just Kids received the National Book Award and has been translated in over 40 languages. (See HBO’s Hannibal for a strong lesson in the former.).

Nevins noted that “every studio and producer in town” had been after Smith’s book. And now another purveyor of sins, Penny awful creator John Logan, will forge that work in the Piss Factory.

As previously reported, Smith will be publishing a follow-up to Just Kids titled M Train on October 6. It is believed Smith started writing the screenplay a year after the book was released.

Showtime CEO David Nevins has announced a new partnership between “Penny Dreadful” scribe John Logan and Patti Smith, whose famous autobiography “Just Kids” (2012) is finally getting the Hollywood treatment it deserves. It stretches forward into the mid-’70s to discuss how the complicated friendship inevitably impacted Smith’s career, specifically on her classic Horses.