BOOKS

‘Children of Blood and Bone’ to Be a Disney Movie

Elena Seibert

The novel Children of Blood and Bone set to be an upcoming Disney film.

Henry and Holt Company

Nigerian-American novelist, Tomi Adeyemi, will be having her famous novel, Children of Blood and Bone, be adapted into a Disney film. This film will be taken up by Lucasfilms, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Films, and may even be their first non-Star Wars or Indiana Jones project.

Though there is no release date or casting details currently, we know the film will be directed by “production by Temple Hill (the company behind the Maze Runner movies), a script by David Magee, and direction by The Mandalorian‘s Rick Famuyiwa. As of now, only Famuyiwa is staying on as director” according to Tor.com

As stated in an article by Shadow and Act, Fox picked up the project before the novel had been published. The article states, “Adeyemi’s seven-figure deal with Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for the book was one of the biggest YA debut novel publishing deals ever.”

The novel is the first book that is currently in progress to become a trilogy. It was originally published in 2018. Children of Blood and Bone was even nominated for a Hugo award.

The premise of this Nigerian-folklore novel revolves around Zélie, a diviner who is banned from practicing magic by a ruthless king. Zélie is the only one who can bring magic back, and it is up to her to revolt against the corrupt king. In an interview with Glitter, Adeyemi described the novel as “Black Panther with magic.”

She further attributes the story to represent the Black experience: “This is also about what it feels like to be Black today and the intense fear but I don’t think we really talk about as a society or even in Black communities and I don’t really know why that doesn’t happen.”

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We are so excited to see African representation in Young-Adult novels and on the screen. Make sure to check out Children of Blood and Bone and Adeyemi’s other works.