Lucasfilm Gives Up 'Children Of Blood and Bone' Adaption To Paramount

The name Lucasfilm Ltd. will forever be associated with Star Wars. But during its 50 years of existence, the company has ventured into other areas from time to time, most notably, of course, the Indiana Jones franchise. Still, it is also responsible for movies like Willow, Labyrinth, the tragically underrated Howard the Duck, or, more recently, Red Tails, the film about the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

But now it seems that Lucasfilm is changing its strategy and focusing entirely on its primary brands, as the company gave away one of its most prestigious projects outside of Star Wars.

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March 2018 saw the publication of Tomi Adeyemi’s debut novel Children of Blood and Bone, the first book of a planned trilogy, a young adult fantasy novel, in the fictional country of Orïsha, presumably somewhere in Africa. Part 2 of the trilogy called Children of Virtue and Vengeance was published in 2019.

Orïsha is inhabited by two kinds of people: the diviners, who use magic, and the non-magical kosidán. Unfortunately, 11 years ago, the magic was turned off by King Saran, and most diviners were hunted down and killed. The book’s heroine, a girl, named Zélie Adebola, whose slain mother has been a diviner, tries to restore the magic with the help of her brother and the daughter of King Saran.

Even before the first book was released, Fox 2000, the literary-minded label of 20th Century Fox Studios, secured the rights to adapt the novel into a movie. But then Fox and all of its brands and subsidiaries were acquired by Disney. In the aftermath of the merger, the executives of Fox 2000 were laid off, and the plans for the Children of Blood and Bone movie just fizzled out.

That was until Lucasfilm’s CEO Kathleen Kennedy got interested in the project. So, back in December of 2020, at Disney Investor’s Day, Lucasfilm not only announced several new Star Wars projects (among them the Ahoska series, Star Wars Visions, Andor, and a series about Lando Calrissian), as well as Indiana Jones 5 and a new series based on the movie Willow, but also Children of Blood and Bone as a theatrical release. The movie was planned to be Lucasfilm’s next big IP, besides the galaxy far, far away and the adventures of the man with the fedora. At that time, Rick Famuyiwa, who later directed 3 episodes of The Mandalorian, became attached to the project.

But shortly after this announcement, things started to fall apart, and the project stalled again. Adeyemi finally became impatient with the lack of progress and demanded to write the script for the movie herself, which Lucasfilm apparently wasn’t going to agree to. With both sides unwilling to give up their position, Lucasfilm quietly decided to put the movie into turnaround in the fall of 2021. A turnaround or turnaround deal is an arrangement in the film industry whereby the production costs of a project that one studio has developed are declared a loss on the company’s tax return, thereby preventing the studio from exploiting the property any further.

After several months of bidding, the project finally landed at Paramount in early January, with the original producers Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, and Karen Rosenfelt back on board. And unlike Lucasfilm, Paramount had no problem with granting Adeyemi not only the right to convert her novel into a script but also giving her vast creative freedom in doing so.

As the movie is still in the early stages of development, there is currently no information on when Children of Blood and Bone will be released on the big screen, but sometime in 2023 is possible. It’s also unknown if Rick Famuyiwa is still involved in the project.

As for Lucasfilm, sources report that the company has abandoned its plans for projects outside its established territory for the time being and is solely focusing on the multiple Star Wars endeavors it has in the works. Besides Star Wars, Lucasfilm is developing Indiana Jones 5 and the upcoming Willow series, with Warwick Davis reprising his role as the titular character.

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Written by Gerald Petschk

Source(s): THR

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