We are still waiting on adaptations for many hugely popular young adult and new adult Fantasy novels, including A Court of Thorns and Roses, Throne of Glᴀss, Fourth Wing, and their contemporaries. However, while several of these properties have adaptations in development, some even with confirmed casts and scripts, one series from well before the BookTok era of fantasy literature is going in a different direction. Yet when YA fantasy remains largely an untapped market for the film and TV industry, it is reasonable for many to ask: “What is going on with the YA fantasy race?”

After the A Court of Thorns and Roses’ TV show’s disappointing cancellation before it had even begun, author Sarah J. Maas is reportedly interested in shopping her works to other streamers and networks. Meanwhile, the Children of Blood and Bone movie and Fourth Wing TV show are making steady progress, and will hopefully see better results than Shadow and Bone‘s early cancellation. However, another once-popular fantasy book series also recently reaffirmed that its movie adaptation is on the way, this one doing away with initial ᴀssumptions of how this story should be told.

Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles Is Being Adapted As An Animated Movie

A New Sci-Fi Fairy Tale Epic Is Coming In 2028

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Locksmith Animation are collaborating on an animated movie adaptation of Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles, which begins with the 2012 novel Cinder, with the release date of Nov. 2, 2028 locked in. Noëlle Raffaele will be directing the animated feature, while Lindsey Ferrentino, Kalen Egan, and Travis Sentell are the co-writers of the script. The series comprises four novels — Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter — as well as the prequel novella, Fairest: Levana’s Story, and the short story collection Stars Above.

It is not yet clear if WB and Locksmith intend to collapse the series into one movie or produce multiple installments. The Lunar Chronicles is a series of entwined retellings of a selection of classic fairy tales in a sci-fi setting. Set in our world sometime in the future, Cinder begins the series from the perspective of Cinder, a cyborg living with her step-family in New Beijing. Meyer constructs a rich backdrop, where the conflict revolves around the tensions between Earth and Luna (the moon) when the queen of the latter wants to rule the planet below as well.

With each new book, we are introduced to another main character: Scarlet, who sets out to find her missing grandmother in France; Cress, a hacker imprisoned on a space station before crash-landing in the desert; and Winter, the stepdaughter of the evil Lunar queen. All are fated to meet Cinder and help her on her quest, which begins with the first book. Elements of biological warfare and the exploitation of certain groups for medical and military strength are at play, as the growing inner circle of heroes set out to dethrone Queen Levana before she seizes control of the entire known world.

The ᴀssumption That Books Like The Lunar Chronicles Need A Live-Action Adaptation Isn’t Universal Anymore

We Once Would Have Thought The Lunar Chronicles Being Live-Action Was A Given

A movie adaptation of Cinder and/or The Lunar Chronicles was first announced in 2022 — but maybe it is even better that it is only seemingly moving forward now. It is no secret that animation geared at an older demographic has been on the rise, as well as stylized 3D animation, which has been dazzling audiences with gorgeously rendered characters and action in various artistic styles. While The Lunar Chronicles was always being optioned as an animated movie, waiting a few more years has allowed other projects to push forward the boundaries of animation just a bit more.

To me, Arcane seems like a demonstration of the perfect aesthetic and medium for The Lunar Chronicles. Meanwhile, the Spider-Verse movies have set the stage for what a big-scale, epic animated action movie event really can be. There was a time when if we had heard something like The Lunar Chronicles was being adapted, we’d have ᴀssumed that it would have to be in live-action, like The Hunger Games or Divergent before it. Today, while other YA adaptations are sticking with live-action, The Lunar Chronicles could be a PG-13, highly stylistic animated movie, and expect to be received well by the public.

There Are A Lot of Parts Of The Lunar Chronicles That Will Be Better In Animation

Some Of The Lunar Chronicles Concepts Will Be Easier To Take Seriously In Animation

In retrospect, some parts of The Lunar Chronicles are a bit goofy, or at least very out there. The setting includes genetically engineered wolf-human hybrids (who demonstrate some wolf behavioral tendencies like howling, and refer to a partner as a “mate”), robots that look like humans, a domed civilization on the moon, and people with the ability to telepathically control others’ actions and feelings. Storytelling elements very similar to these have been depicted in live-action, with varying success, usually depending on a given project’s ability to balance its tone, or have such stellar writing that we accept the more outlandish concepts.

It may be possible to make a good live-action adaptation of The Lunar Chronicles — but with animation, the filmmakers can lean into the fundamentally imaginative nature of the story for an even more spectacular effect. They can do visible whirls to show mind control; make the Lunar city especially ethereal; and just separate some of the weirder parts of the story enough from reality that we can take it seriously in such an otherworldly medium. Of course, stylized animation has been breathtaking in recent years, and The Lunar Chronicles offers many opportunities for simply beautiful designs.

The Lunar Chronicles Will Stand Out From Other Upcoming YA Fantasy Adaptations

If YA Fantasy Is About To Explode On Screen, At Least The Lunar Chronicles Will Be Different

With Amazon’s Fourth Wing TV show, the Children of Blood and Bone movie, and other projects in development, it seems possible that we are teetering on the edge of YA fantasy finally breaking through into cinema. Once, the YA category was all about The Hunger Games and other dystopias, but it never really recovered its strength once authors started to move more into traditional fantasy settings and royal politics narratives. It is bizarre that Hollywood hasn’t seized this opportunity when many of these books have dedicated fanbases; if nothing else, adapting them would make money.

However, maybe after the setbacks of the pandemic and the writers’ strikes, film and television are finally going to get going on this — which means that The Lunar Chronicles will have a lot of compeтιтion from other fantasy adaptations. However, because of its medium, The Lunar Chronicles is inherently going to stand out from the rest and intrigue audiences right away. Thinking of how big things like Arcane have been in recent years shows a clear path to success for Marissa Meyer’s first movie, which could be refreshed as a staple of the YA movement come 2028.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter