Disney and Offspring Entertainment have bought film rights to Ally Condie's Matched, a futuristic fantasy novel that Dutton is publishing in November, as the first in a trilogy. The world revolves around a society that dictates what individuals can read, watch and believe, and decides who they are partnered with for life during a Matching Ceremony that takes place on their 18th birthday. Variety reports that the property, with a girl torn between two boys, is seen as a potential successor to Twilight; Disney has also bought movie rights to Lauren Kate’s Fallen, another YA fantasy property about a love triangle.
Stacy Whitman at Lee & Low Books has acquired the first two novels for its Tu Books imprint, which launches in fall 2011. The imprint will focus on multicultural middle-grade and YA science fiction and fantasy. For the launch list, Whitman bought world rights to a YA paranormal thriller tentatively titled Wolf Mark by Joseph Bruchac. In the book, when Lucas King's covert-ops father is kidnapped and his best friend is put in danger, Lucas’s only chance to save them is hidden in a monster-guarded mansion: a skin that will let him walk as a wolf. Barbara Kouts of the Barbara S. Kouts Agency was the agent.
Whitman has also bought world rights to Galaxy Games by Greg Fishbone, a middle-grade SF trilogy about an incoming asteroid that turns out to be an alien spaceship, visiting Earth to recruit a team of kid athletes to compete in the upcoming Galaxy Games Tournament. The first book, tentatively titled Preliminaries, will be published in fall 2011. The three-book deal was done by Garrett Hicks at Will Entertainment.
Julie Scheina at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has bought Jennifer E. Smith’s debut middle-grade novel, The Weather Makers, about twins who, after moving to a farm, begin to experience strange weather occurrences, and discover that a clandestine group of “weather makers” has been watching them. Publication is set for spring 2012; Jennifer Joel at ICM did the deal for world English and audio rights.
