Megan Whalen Turner’s award-winning novel The Thief is the latest adaptation on Disney’s plate.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that the studio optioned the book for a live-action film to be written by Brian Duffield (Love and Monsters, Insurgent) and produced by Jim Whitaker, whose recent credits include A Wrinkle in Time and Pete’s Dragon.
The Newbery Honor-winning The Thief is the first novel in the six-book Queen’s Thief series, which began in 1996 and only ended with this year’s acclaimed Return of the Thief. Turner’s work is incredibly beloved for its twists, its mythology, its shifting perspectives, and its emotional impact.
Here’s the publisher’s summary:
Buy the Book
The Thief
The most powerful advisor to the King of Sounis is the magus. He’s not a wizard, he’s a scholar, an aging solider, not a thief. When he needs something stolen, he pulls a young thief from the King’s prison to do the job for him.
Gen is a thief and proud of it. When his bragging lands him behind bars he has one chance to win his freedom, journey to a neighboring kingdom with the magus, find a legendary stone called Hamiathes’s Gift, and steal it.
The magus has plans for his King and his country. Gen has plans of his own.
For a little more backstory, you can read the intro to Natalie Zutter’s “What You Need to Know About The Queen’s Thief Series Before Reading Megan Whalen Turner’s Return of The Thief,” but if you haven’t read the series yet, be sure to stop before the spoilers start!
This news is only about The Thief, not the whole series, but of course a person can hope that the movie is brilliant and the whole series gets the movie treatment. There’s no word yet on production schedule, casting, or release date.
Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief series is absolutely brilliant. I read along with it for the better part of the twenty odd years it was being written and treasure every entry. Favorite still is King of Attolia, the paperback copy of which I have read so many times the spine is broken (and that’s just from reading! I never laid it down with the spine cracked!).
That said, what makes the books brilliant is the sly narration and internal monologues, which are almost impossible to translate to screen. I have no faith whatsoever that Disney will pull it off, and every confidence that they will make a ham-fisted hash of it. Would be far from the first clever YA book they have turned into a mediocre adaptation (see, e.g., Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson).
Still, even a lousy movie can help expand the profile of a book series, and The Thief certainly is worthy of a wide audience.
Eeeeek. This series is tied for first place as my favorite of all time. I hope they do a good job.
I think I am just about ready to re read the series and then move onto the final book which has been on my shelves for months. I hate saying goodbye to a series (although better that than either never finishing (Black Wolves boo hoo hoo) or getting THAT ending (GoT).
My hope is that they re-release the first four books as hardcovers with those beautiful perfect papercraft against stone covers.