After being announced as part of the forthcoming Lucasfilm slate at the Disney Investors Day back in 2020, their proposed adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, set to be helmed by The Mandalorian director Rick Famuyiwa, is now at a new home at Paramount Pictures.
Things began to sour just months after the 2020 Disney Investor Day presentation. Adeyemi, according to sources, grew disenchanted with the pace of the project and began pushing for a stronger voice at the table for the adaptation of her book. The author made the case that she should be the one writing the script, a request Lucasfilm was unwilling to accommodate, sources say.
The sides remained at loggerheads until the project was quietly put into turnaround in the fall of 2021. The bidding and winning of Blood and Bone took a couple of months, and when it landed at Paramount in early January with its original producers, Adeyemi now had what she had asked for: creative influence and the right to pen the screenplay.
In the meantime, Lucasfilm, according to sources, has decidedly shifted away from developing projects that are new and is leaning even more toward those already under its umbrella. Those include a series based on the 1988 fantasy Willow, Indiana Jones 5 and, yes, many, many Star Wars movies and shows.
Regrettable that Lucasfilm won’t be pushing on with this popular young adult fantasy novel, but on the flip side exciting news that Lucasfilm appear to be laser-focusing on their crowd-pleasing vintage slate of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Willow.
