Rebel Girls is still months away from the release of its first fiction book, but Lion Forge Entertainment has already locked it up for a screen adaptation.
At the heart of the deal is a new coming-of-age fantasy book series called Secret Society of Rebel Girls—marking a key departure for the publisher from its biography genre focus.
Children’s television writer Anna McCleery (A Kind of Spark) created the original story and characters behind the Secret Society IP, which centers around a group of young girls who reach out to women from various historical eras (including ancient Rome, Edwardian England and civil rights-era America) for advice and inspiration.
DK will publish Secret Society of Rebel Girls: Nina and the Mysterious Mailbox on August 13, and there are five more books planned in the series. Penned by New York Times bestselling author Marti Dumas, the lead title is about a middle-grader who is surprised to receive a reply after she writes a letter to Cleopatra during detention.
Lion Forge president and chief creative officer Stephanie Sperber is currently spearheading the development of a half-hour animated series treatment for seven- to 12-year-olds. The studio plans to executive produce the project with Rebel Girls and McCleery, who is also penning the pilot script.
“There are so few big IPs available, and when driving discoverability is critical in a world full of content choices, brands like Rebel Girls can really break through,” says Sperber.
More than 11 million copies of existing Rebel Girls books have sold through at retail, and its audio catalogue has generated upwards of 50 million listens. Last year, the company raised US$8 million in funding to support a content scale-up designed to explore new platforms and genres.
