Syfy just keeps nabbing new material for its production pipeline, but unlike everything from Deadly Class to Resident Alien, the network’s latest adaptation comes from the pages of novellas rather than comic books: Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series.
Revealed by The Hollywood Reporter today, the four-novella series will be produced by Syfy and Legendary TV and adapted not by McGuire herself, but Joe Tracz, who wrote the Percy Jackson musical (sidenote: a Percy Jackson musical exists!) and was a screenwriter for Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events adaptation. McGuire took to Twitter to confirm the news and, appropriately, be very happy that her work is headed to TV.
The whole team is AMAZING and the whole process is AMAZING and this could all still come to nothing but MAYBE IT COMES TO SOMETHING and it’s AMAZING.
— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) March 18, 2019
But she also made sure to note to fans that she is not involved in the show’s writing or production—and that any changes from the novels will be made separate from her, although she trusts Tracz’s team to do so:
I am the boss of my books. I can do and write whatever I want. But once I sell the film rights, someone else becomes the boss of that version of the characters. Choices are going to be made, and not by me, and I will not have the authority to object to them.
— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) March 18, 2019
I trust that their changes will be choices, not accidents. And that matters. That lets me relax and watch this whole process with wonder and awe, and with faith. I am on the roller coaster along with all the rest of you, and it’s INCREDIBLE.
— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) March 18, 2019
Wayward Children is set at a boarding school full of kids who have been on magical adventures to other worlds and realms, only to return home and find trouble adjusting to the fact that their lives are now painfully ordinary. Well, ordinary outside of the fact that students suddenly start showing up dead, providing their schoolmates with a chance to relive the heroic thrills of their otherworldly adventures…because the alternative is getting bumped off by the mysterious killer on the loose.
THR notes that the adaptation of Wayward Childen is in “the very early stages of development,” so it’s likely still a ways off at this point. We’ll bring you more on Syfy’s latest schedule reshuffling as we learn it.