Has Disney found its Harry Potter competitor in Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures fantasy series?
While HBO is busy rebooting its Wizarding World of Harry Potter franchise and contending with all the baggage that comes with it, Disney is making strides to introduce fantasy fans to a new IP, Impossible Creatures. The mouse-eared studio recently purchased the rights to Impossible Creatures, the fantasy series by acclaimed British author Katherine Rundell. According to sources, Disney bought the rights for a seven-figure sum, with Rundell adapting the books into screenplays for Disney to bring to life.
Seven figures is a lot of money. However, analysts say Impossible Creatures is on par with money-printing literary properties, such as the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games, and The Twilight Saga. Two of the five-book series are on shelves now, with the first novel published in 2023, while the second installment, The Poisoned King, just debuted. Rundell is racking up accolades for her in-demand series, and in 2024, she was awarded both Author of the Year and Children’s Book of the Year at The British Book Awards. The Impossible Creatures books have sold 4 million copies worldwide. Initially, the five-book series was originally intended to be a trilogy. However, since her success, Rundell plans to expand the core series to five books, with spinoffs and prequel books in the mix.
Here’s a synopsis for Impossible Creatures, courtesy of Amazon:
The day that Christopher saved a drowning baby griffin from a hidden lake would change his life forever.
It’s the day he learned about the Archipelago—a cluster of unmapped islands where magical creatures of every kind have thrived for thousands of years, until now. And it’s the day he met Mal—a girl on the run, in desperate need of his help.
Mal and Christopher embark on a wild adventure, racing from island to island, searching for someone who can explain why the magic is fading and why magical creatures are suddenly dying. They consult sphinxes, battle kraken, and negotiate with dragons. But the closer they get to the dark truth of what’s happening, the clearer it becomes: no one else can fix this. If the Archipelago is to be saved, Mal and Christopher will have to do it themselves.
“When I read Impossible Creatures, I knew it belonged here at Disney,” said Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger. “I was immediately drawn into the vibrant world Katherine imagined and the possibilities of what we could do together with this story. Written by Katherine herself, these movies are in the best of hands with our Walt Disney Studios team, and I can’t wait to see this tale brought to the screen.”
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be linking arms with Disney,” the author said in a statement. “It’s a privilege to be writing these screenplays and developing these first movies in the franchise together with Charles, my team at Impossible Films, and with the exceptional team at Disney. I’m especially grateful to Bob Iger, whose enthusiasm after reading the book helped set this collaboration in motion, and to Alan Bergman and David Greenbaum for being incredible partners throughout this process. Our ambition is to build Glimouria and Impossible Creatures into a spectacular series of films, so that we can entertain and inspire family audiences across the world.”
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