Ava DuVernay is adapting Tui T. Sutherland's dragon fantasy opus Wings Of Fire for TV
Ava DuVernay is now adding TV animation to the wide variety of genres and styles she’s handled over the years, with Deadline reporting that the A Wrinkle In Time director has just signed on to produce a cartoon adaptation of Tui T. Sutherland’s Wings Of Fire for Warner Bros. TV. Sutherland’s 15-novels-and-counting YA series centers on a series of young dragons and the various prophecies that control and dictate their fire-breathing, wings-of-said-fire-having lives.
DuVernay is a prolific TV producer, of course, having created Queen Sugar over on OWN, as well as a number of other miniseries and documentary projects. She’s also a noted genre enthusiast; we can only assume her work on the purported New Gods movie with D.C. has prepared her to take on a pantheon of dragons that includes names like “Morrowseer,” “Moonwatcher,” and “Princess Tsunami.” DuVernay is developing the series at Warner Bros. Animation, after what was reportedly a heated and high-number bidding war to acquire the rights to the bestselling books, which are currently available in 16 languages worldwide.
[Note: We tried to dig up a video showing some of the depths of WoF fandom online, but we very quickly hit a GIF of Angela Lansbury clutching prison bars behind the the text “Prickle in the Prison of the Stronghold,” and decided that some waters are just too damn deep for wading in.]
The goal, presumably, is to turn this into something with a bit of that nice prestige heat to it, all the better to draw in not just the kids who already identify themselves as MudWings or members of the Talons Of Peace, etc., but their parents, too. There’s no word yet on where the series will land—between The CW and its various HBO brands, WarnerMedia isn’t hurting for options—but DuVernay’s name on the project will presumably help it find its proper roost.