RubyRock Pictures is backing two adaptations of somewhat older book series. One is The String Diaries from author Stephen Lloyd Jones, which is getting adapted for television by Steven Lightfoot, whose credits include showrunning Netflix’s The Punisher and spearheading the upcoming Spider-Man series, Noir, starring Nicolas Cage. According to Deadline, which broke the news, Sony Pictures is also backing the project.
The first book came out in 2013 and begins by focusing on a woman named Hannah, whose family is in danger as she looks to protect a trove of diaries that date back 200 years. Those tomes come from her ancestors, passed down from mother to daughter, and serve as a survival guide against a supernatural foe. The book skips through time, going back to nineteenth-century Hungary, 1970s Oxford, England, and present day.
The second series, Vampirates by Justin Somper, is currently looking for a showrunner. The middle grade novels are about two siblings, Conner and Grace Tempest, who are separated at sea and raised on two very different ships. One of those ships—you’ve already guessed it—is led by an Irish vampire named Lorcan Furey.
The first book, Demons of the Ocean, came out in 2005. The older debut dates of the two series are part of RubyRock’s strategy of finding titles that “slipped the cracks five to ten years ago,” according to the company’s CEO, Zoë Rocha.
She added to Deadline, “Everything is going on pre-empts and is so beyond our price bracket but there is so much content out there that slips through. [Slightly older novels] are a really good place to look.”
No news yet on if/when these projects will go into production, much less make it to a television screen.
