Nigerian-American writer Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone has been optioned for film for a while now, but the rights expired recently and Paramount Pictures won the new bidding war. The YA fantasy series Legacy of Orïsha was acquired for a three-movie deal, with Adeyemi overseeing the project for a whopping seven figures.
This is an extremely exciting production as the famous director of The Woman King Gina Prince-Bythewood will be heading the film adaptation. According to Deadline, the producers include Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill Entertainment, Karen Rosenfelt of Sunswept Entertainment and Matt Jackson of Jackson Pictures, while Adeyemi and Reggie Rock Bythewood will be executive producers.
Deadline reported that the battle for film rights was intense as multiple studios including Universal, Amazon and Netflix were fighting to win. However, Paramount’s final offer beat the others as it included a seven-figure screenwriting guarantee, creative approvals for Adeyemi, and a guaranteed theatrical release.
Tomi Adeyemi is a Nigerian-American writer, best known for her novel Children of Blood and Bone, the first in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. It won the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, the 2019 Waterstones Book Prize, and the 2019 Hugo Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. She was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2019 and was part of TIME 100 Most Influential People of 2020 in the “Pioneers” category.
Adeyemi’s West African fantasy debut imagines a thrilling world of magic and danger. The main character Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic and her Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared under the orders of a ruthless king, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
We can’t wait for the film’s release!
