Gina Prince-Bythewood To Direct Adaptation Of Tomi Adeyemi’s ‘Children Of Blood And Bone’ For Paramount Pictures
Deadline reports that Paramount Pictures’ adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi‘s novel Children of Blood and Bone is gaining momentum with director Gina Prince-Bythewood is coming on to helm. Prince-Bythewood will develop the next pass of a draft penned by Adeyemi.
The novel, published in March 2018, follows a young woman in a mystical world named Orisha who witnesses the death of her mother and other magicians known as the maji by order of an unruly king and must team up with a rogue princess to avoid a crown prince, vengeful spirits and snow “leoponaires” to try and bring magic back to the land.
Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill Entertainment, Karen Rosenfelt of Sunswept Entertainment and Matt Jackson of Jackson Pictures will produce. Adeyemi and Reggie Rock Bythewood will executive produce.
The project has been a priority for the studio since 2022, when Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group co-presidents Daria Cercek and Mike Ireland acquired rights to the trilogy in a competitive bidding battle.
After Lucasfilm let the rights lapse on the series, reps for Adeyemi took it to the market where it had immediate interest. Sources said at the time multiple studios including Universal, Amazon and Netflix were in the mix as the property is seen as one of the more substantial IPs since The Hunger Games rights hit the market.
Insiders said Paramount’s final offer blew away the others as it included several incentives including a seven-figure screenwriting guarantee as well creative approvals for Adeyemi. Another major factor was a guaranteed theatrical release, a huge card to play as studios compete with streamers willing to pay much more for packages that hit the market, and that leverage of a global release helps when those guarantees are becoming more scarce.
Adeyemi’s first novel, Children of Blood and Bone, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Its sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, also debuted at No. 1 on the Times list.