Another Win for Kathleen Kennedy!!!

Part of this gig involves scanning various showbiz trade media for leads and today I saw something that gave my brain a hiccough.  

“Paramount Lands the Rights the to YA Bestseller Children of Blood and Bone.”

That put a jingle-jangle in my noodle because I remembered thinking years ago, ‘I have no interest at all in seeing that thing.’  And a quick check says that my disinterest dates from 2019.

Most of you, my beloved Darklings, could not care less either.  

But for three years Kathleen Kennedy has been talking non-stop about Children of Blood and Bone, which she secured for LucasFilm at least three years ago.  The last mention she made of it was back in October of last year.

Children of Blood and Bone is a fantasy story set in West Africa.  Upfront, I’ve never read the book. Truth be told, it looks like flavor of the month YA garbage to me but I thought the same thing about Six of Crows and I couldn’t have been more wrong there.  Maybe it’s great, who knows? Because I don’t.  But it is exactly the kind of thing that the Baizou class, which Kathleen Kennedy handsomely represents, loves to pretend that they have read and thinks is the new Huckleberry Finn but without any of the gross slavery stuff, (proving they know absolutely nothing of the history of West Africa). 

This thing was about as greenlit for LucasFilm as you can get.  

And now it’s at Paramount?!?!?!

What happened?

Two possibilities. 

One. The author was smart enough to put a deadline in her contract with Disney.  Get it done by this date or all rights revert back to me. 

That isn’t what happened.  Even stringent movie rights options are a lot longer than three years.  There are too many variables that would prevent production from starting in three years. You might get a five-year contract but not three. No author is getting that deal.  And as I just said, Kay-Kay thought this was a Go around Halloween 2021.

Second possibility.  Chapek punted it. 

Which is what happened.  There are only two guys above Kathleen Kennedy, Bergman then Chapek.  And Chapek doesn’t know a good story from a hole in his butt. That means Bergman axed it after getting the nod from Chapek.

A West African fantasy story has no place whatsoever under the LucasFilm brand. Pixar might be able to do something with it but not LucasFilm.

The first line in the Deadline announcement piece is, “Following a bidding war… Paramount has landed the right to…”

Bidding war?  

What bidding war?  Those are never secret in Hollywood.  What happens is that there is a report of major interest by all the big studios in a certain IP and 48 hours later Deadline and Variety announce the results.  That didn’t happen because there was no bidding war.  Disney made a non-cash deal with Paramount to lateral the rights under the table.  Something to do with Secret Hideout dropping its issues with The Orville, maybe but who knows?

Bottom line it was dropped by Disney and the trades were instructed to NOT report it like that.

Another win for Kathleen Kennedy.