Noah Hawley‘s series adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut‘s novel Cat’s Cradle is officially dead at FX, which is bad news for the fans of the filmmaker’s work who believed he was the ideal candidate to bring the project to life. Admittedly, it was a long time ago that the series was first announced, with Hawley attaching himself to the project towards the end of 2015, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge between now and then.

Vonnegut adaptations have been decidedly hit-or-miss over the decades, but Hawley‘s small-screen work has proven him more than capable of lending hard-hitting and often satirical stories based on pre-existing source material with his own unique sense of visual, narrative, and stylistic sensibilities.

FX president John Landgraf was the one who made the bad news official, but he at least reiterated the network is keen to keep collaborating with the Legion and Fargo creator moving forward:

“We made a decision not to move forward with that. At FX. Although we still have an overall deal with Noah Hawley, and you know as a studio FX Productions is still very supportive of Noah and his desire to make that so if there’s another entity that wants to support the commission that will move forward, but not under the FX brand.”

Cat’s Cradle was Vonnegut’s fourth novel that first hit bookshelves in 1963, following a narrator named John. He plans to write a book called The Day the World Ended about what important Americans found themselves doing during the bombing of Hiroshima, before finding his life intertwined with the children of Felix Hoenikker, the fictional founding father of the atomic bomb and inventor of a military-funded scientific breakthrough known as Ice-Nine that freezes water at room temperature and has the power to destroy the world as we know it.

A satirical look at the human condition, religion, science, war, and technology, it’s packed with themes Hawley has explored numerous times in a variety of projects spanning multiple genres. Cat’s Cradle may have joined his planned Star Trek movie on the scrapheap, but he’s still working on developing the first episodic adventure set in the Alien franchise for FX alongside Ridley Scott, which is a sci-fi dream team if ever there was one.

via Collider