A few weeks ago Paramount was negotiating a deal to acquire screen rights to
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, the
Laini Taylor novel that was published late September. Well they didn't make it, and
Universal has won a four-studio bidding war for the rights to what could be the next Twilight.
The young-adult fantasy novel, the first book in a trilogy has been one of the most well-received books of the year including Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com and the Huffington Post.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone follows Taylor's Lips Touch: Three Times (National Book Award finalist). Like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, the heroine Karou hides an inner vulnerability that is masked by a tough exterior. The second what makes Daughter of Smoke & Bone such a joy is the very non-American setting. However, the blue-haired, multilingual, tattooed heroine is now on her way to Hollywood.
Taylor said in a statement:
It is a hugely thrilling prospect to think about Universal and filmmakers translating my world onscreen and giving it a second life in such a grand way. I'm over the moon.
If you didn't read the book here's the synopsis:
Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.
When one of the strangers–beautiful, haunted Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
