the industry

Showtime Is Adapting Patti Smith’s Memoir Just Kids; Masters of Sex and Ray Donovan Have Been Renewed

SWITZERLAND-MUSIC-FESTIVAL-PALEO
Rock on. Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

Showtime has picked up the adaptation of Patti Smith’s best-selling memoir Just Kids as a limited series. Smith has been working on a script with Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan (of Gladiator and The Aviator fame) for the past four years, about her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. “The medium of a television limited series offers narrative freedom and a chance to expand upon the themes of the book,” said Smith, who is also co-producing the series. While there haven’t been any casting announcements, she has said that she wants Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson — or perhaps a couple of unknowns. “We were 20. We were unknowns, and I think it should be unknowns,” she said.

In other non–Twin Peaks–related news, Showtime has renewed Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex for 12-episode fourth seasons. The network also ordered two pilots: One for I’m Dying Up Here, a show about the 1970s stand-up comedy scene, executive-produced by Jim Carrey and starring Dave Flebotte; the other is an as-yet-untitled bildungsroman of a young black man set in Chicago, created by Lena Waithe and co-produced by Common. It may be summer, but TV keeps coming!

Showtime Is Adapting Patti Smith’s Just Kids