Tade Thompson’s The Murders of Molly Southbourne, S.A. Chakraborty’s The Daevabad Trilogy, and Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co.books are coming to TV! Deadline reports that Edgar Wright’s new production company, Complete Fiction, is developing all three book-to-series adaptations in collaboration with Netflix.
According to the outlet, the series based on Stroud’s books will be “helmed and executive produced” by Wright’s long-time collaborator Joe Cornish. There’s no word yet on crew or other production details for the other two.
Here are the official synopses for all three book series.
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The Murders Of Molly Southbourne
The Murders of Molly Southbourne
The rule is simple: don’t bleed.
For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.
Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?
Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing—are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive.
But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass—a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.
In Daevabad, within gilded brass walls laced with enchantments and behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments run deep. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, her arrival threatens to ignite a war that has been simmering for centuries.
A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts, spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they aren’t exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities required to see-and eradicate-these supernatural foes. Many different Psychic Detection Agencies have cropped up to handle the dangerous work, and they are in fierce competition for business.
In The Screaming Staircase, the plucky and talented Lucy Carlyle teams up with Anthony Lockwood, the charismatic leader of Lockwood & Co, a small agency that runs independent of any adult supervision. After an assignment leads to both a grisly discovery and a disastrous end, Lucy, Anthony, and their sarcastic colleague, George, are forced to take part in the perilous investigation of Combe Carey Hall, one of the most haunted houses in England. Will Lockwood & Co. survive the Hall’s legendary Screaming Staircase and Red Room to see another day?
Check out an excerpt from The Murders of Molly Southborne—its sequel, The Survival of Molly Southborne, is also available from Tordotcom Publishing. You can also read excerpts from books one and two of The Daevabad Trilogy here on Tor.com—The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper. Book three, The Empire of Gold, is forthcoming from Harper Voyager in June 2020.
This isn’t the only Molly Southbourne adaptation in the works. In 2017, prior to its publication, Thompson’s novella was optioned for a feature film adaptation, to be executive produced by Brendan Deneen and Tordotcom Publishing Editor Carl Engle-Laird. There has been no update since then on the film adaptation, and there’s no word on how it will be impacted by the new TV option.
