Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow, a book that has been described as a mashup between Pacific Rim, The Hunger Games, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, has been optioned for feature adaptation, which means we may see Wu Zetian helming her monster-mech sometime in the near future.
Variety broke the news that Erik Feig’s Picturestart, a production company that focuses on “discovery of voice” content (whatever that means), has picked up adaptive rights for the young adult book with hopes of “plotting a franchise around the science fiction premise.” J.C. Lee (Bad Genius) is on board to pen the screenplay.
For those of you who haven’t read Iron Widow yet, that premise revolves around an alien invasion of the fictional planet of Huaxia, where big mech robots are humanity’s crucial line of defense. These robots are called Chrysalises and require a boy-girl pairing to pilot them, with the girls not lasting that long as their co-pilot essentially uses them like a battery and drains their lifeforce during battle. The book centers around Wu Zetian, an eighteen-year-old who offers herself to be one of these expendable “batteries” in order to enact vengeance against the one responsible for her sister’s death.
This is still in the early days, and although it’s been optioned with a writer already attached, there’s still a long way to go and many hurdles to cross before we see a film adaptation of Iron Widow on the big screen.
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