In February 2018, Amazon Studios announced plans to adapt Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas" for TV, with Kelly as writer. However, development has been discontinued as of August 2020. Kelly said "I’d written probably 20-30 pages of the bible, but once I got a sense that it wasn’t going to happen, I had to stop writing because you become emotionally attached to the work." Kelly has stated that he believes that the decision to cancel the show's production was because "the estate didn’t want to go through with it. It wasn’t the material. They hadn’t seen anything [I had written, it was just because I think they weren’t ready to do it, for whatever reason. I’m a little mystified myself, to be honest. […] I don’t know why it fell through, because it looked like it was all lined up to be really, really interesting".