Children of Blood and Bone. Image from Books Unchained.

Fox 2000’s film adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone: Legacy of Orisha, the first novel in her YA trilogy which attracted a million dollar advance, spent 25 consecutive weeks on The New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Bestseller List, and was featured on a segment by Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show, has gotten a director: Rick Famuyiwa.

The Nigerian-American filmmaker, once attached to DC’s upcoming The Flash, is best-known for his coming-of-age critical hit Dope. Several of his films focus on the Black experience in America, including The Wood and Brown Sugar.

Rick Famuyiwa. Image from consequenceofsound.net.

Drawing heavily from Yoruba cosmology, Children of Blood and Bone tells the story of Zelie Adebola and her fight to bring back magic to to her homeland called Orisha. The book was published by Macmillan’s Children Publishing Group on 6 March 2018 and became the biggest fantasy and YA debut of the year.

The film’s script, written by Mary Poppins Returns screenwriter David Magee, is being produced by Temple Hill, the production company behind Love, Simon and The Maze Runner trilogy.

Tomi Adeyemi.

The second book in Adeyemi’s series, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, will be released in June 2019.