Showtime to Adapt Patti Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ as Miniseries

According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Nevins, Showtime’s president, announced the upcoming series on Tuesday during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, also saying that Smith will be heavily involved by co-writing and co-producing the series along with Penny terrible creator John Logan. Now, the successful book has spawned a TV show, as Just Kids will be coming to Showtime for a limited series.

In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the ChelseaHotel in the late sixties and seventies. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. Her memoir, Just Kids, is a bestselling award victor that’s been translated into 40 languages.

She has recorded twelve albums, including “Horses”, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred debut albums of all time by Rolling Stone. In addition to Red, his Broadway credits include I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers and the book of The Last Ship. “Showtime fought hard” for the rights to Smith’s book, Nevins said, and he joked that maybe Smith’s leanings had something to do with it. It “didn’t hurt that Patti is a diehard Penny awful fan”. He received Oscar nods for the screenplays of Hugo, The Aviator and Gladiator.