Entertainment

Paramount's Next Big Fantasy Franchise Officially Arrives in 10 Weeks

Nairavoice · Nov 6, 2026 · 6 min read

2027 is shaping up to be another big year for fantasy adaptations. Not even two full months in, Netflix will release Greta Gerwig‘s much-anticipated Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew in theaters on February 12, marking the first movie from C.S. Lewis‘ literary world to reach the silver screen in over 15 years. On December 17, 2027, meanwhile, Andy Serkis will bring viewers back to Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, complete with Ian McKellen, Kate Winslet, Lee Pace, and Elijah Wood reprising their roles from Peter Jackson‘s trilogies. It’s not just books getting the big-screen treatment either. Sony’s The Legend of Zelda will take to the fields of Hyrule on April 30, headlined by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Bo Bragason in the iconic roles of Link and Zelda.

For Paramount’s fantasy ambitions, however, the charge will be led by Children of Blood and Bone. Based on Tomi Adeyemi‘s breakout hit fantasy novel of the same name, the film will introduce a new audience to the Kingdom of Orïsha and the young woman, Zélie Adebola, who seeks to restore its magic. Thuso Mbedu will play Zélie on her journey as she wields the powers granted to her by the gods themselves to strike back at the oppressive regime ruling her people and take back what was so violently ripped from them. Along the way, she’ll make some powerful allies too, with the daughter and son of the king joining the fight against the monarchy to forge a better future. A full seven years after Fox 2000 initially optioned the YA book, its release is finally close at hand.

Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.

You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.

This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.

You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.

One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.

You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.

Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.

You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.

Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.

As of writing, only ten weeks remain until the ambitious adaptation hits theaters on January 15. Gina Prince-Bythewood, who last worked with Mbedu in the Viola Davis-led epic, The Woman King, in 2022, took the reins of Children of Blood and Bone as both director and co-writer alongside Adeyemi. Davis is also part of the star-studded cast, which prominently features The Acolyte alum Amandla Stenberg as Princess Amari and F1‘s Damson Idris as Prince Inan, alongside Tosin Cole, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Zackary Momoh, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Regina King, and Idris Elba.

Why Has ‘Children of Blood and Bone’s Author Distanced Herself From the Movie?

While there’s been plenty of anticipation to see how the New York Times bestselling West African mythology-inspired epic translates to film, one person who’s not particularly excited for the film is the author herself. Adeyemi is credited as the co-writer of the screenplay, but openly distanced herself from the project over the summer, describing a “painful” falling out in a series of posts on social media. “I have not seen the film, and I will not watch it,” she added, also writing that she ultimately left because she couldn’t “continue being hurt and attacked behind the scenes.” Much of her frustration was specifically directed at Stenberg, who had previously indicated the author herself wanted her involved in the adaptation. Exact details of what transpired are unknown, but it has sown some uncertainty about the production and how it will ultimately treat Adeyemi’s source material.

Children of Blood and Bone launches in theaters on January 15. Stay tuned here at Collider for more updates as it draws near.