Hulu's ACOTAR Show's Fate Brings Up An Important Question: WTF Is Going On With The YA Fantasy Adaptation Race?
Hulu recently announced that it is no longer moving forward with its TV show adaptation of A Court of Thorns and Roses, the bestselling fantasy young adult/new adult novel series by Sarah J. Maas. Maas is also known for penning the Throne of Glass books, another staple of an entire era of fantasy literature that hasn't truly yet made it to the big screen. ACOTAR fans have eagerly been waiting for news about the show for the last few years but have only been disappointed when it comes to Feyre's riveting story making it to TV.
Ronald D. Moore was tapped as the showrunner of the ACOTAR TV show but left the project last year; Variety then confirmed in February 2025 what everyone may have assumed. After Throne of Glass was marketed entirely as a YA series, ACOTAR essentially kick-started the sister genre of the new adult market.Maas' best book series were released alongside other similar fantasy sagas and doubtlessly inspired more, as part of a growing trend in literature. However, A Court of Thorns and Roses' official cancelation raises questions about where all these projects are in the adaptation pipeline.
TOG & ACOTAR Are Part Of A Whole Trend Of YA (& New Adult) Fantasy Primed For Adaptations
Several Other Series Like ACOTAR Are Also Popular & Would Make For Great Adaptations
In the early 2010s, the YA market was dominated by the teen dystopia plots of The Hunger Games and its countless imitators. Once the YA dystopia craze sputtered out, a kind of reformed version of the classic fantasy setting began to dominate, spearheaded by Throne of Glass and later, A Court of Thorns and Roses. It is likely that this trend was inspired by the rise of Game of Thrones, which kicked off its run in 2011. While Maas' writings are some of the most popular, its contemporaries include the Grishaverse, Children of Blood and Bone, and The Folk of the Air.
Series | Author | Year Started | Number Of Books To Date |
|---|---|---|---|
Throne of Glass | Sarah J. Maas | 2012 | 8 |
A Court of Thorns and Roses | " " | 2015 | 5 |
Crescent City | " " | 2020 | 3 |
Grishaverse | Leigh Bardugo | 2012 | 7 |
Galaxy Stern | " " | 2019 | 2 |
The Lunar Chronicles | Marissa Meyer | 2011 | 6 |
The Folk of the Air | Holly Black | 2018 | 6 |
Blood and Ash | Jennifer L. Armentrout | 2020 | 10 |
Serpent & Dove | Shelby Mahurin | 2019 | 4 |
Legacy of Orïsha | Tomi Adeyemi | 2018 | 3 |
Legendborn | Tracy Deonn | 2020 | 3 |
Cursebreakers | Brigid Kemmerer | 2019 | 3 |
As the TikTok era of the book industry also began to take off, many new releases were marketed as being similar to previous ones, and many smaller-scale series likely inspired by the trend also arrived in bookstores. As usual, the film and TV industry would be looking for what could be the next big hit. Yet another shift in entertainment that occurred around this time was the rise of streaming services, and with the Throne of Glass-style fantasy era showing no signs of slowing down, it seemed only a matter of time before it exploded in TV.
Sarah J. Maas' Books Are Not The Only Projects Stuck In Development Hell For Years
The Cruel Prince, Ninth House, Children Of Blood & Bone, And More Have Been Stalled
Hulu bought the rights to Throne of Glass in 2016 and A Court of Thorns and Roses in the early 2020s, with plans to create TV show adaptations, but both projects remained stuck in development hell up until today, with the rights set to expire this summer and Maas planning on shopping her work to other distributors. ACOTAR's cancelation continuing this disappointing Maas trend is actually indicative of where this whole subgenre of literature is at. Several other such series were picked up by production companies, but their adaptations, unfortunately, never got off the ground.
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The Folk of the Air, the fae-centric series most naturally comparable to Maas' writings, was purchased by Universal in 2017 for a movie franchise adaptation, but nothing ever came of it. Disney and Lucasfilm were attached to Children of Blood and Bone for a long time, but eventually let the rights lapse, which were then bought in a bidding war by Paramount. Some lesser-known fantasy duologies and trilogies such as We Hunt the Flame were also bought up — in this case, Deadline reported that it was being developed by STXtv in 2021.
This coincides with the various streaming services' obvious interest in finding ready-to-adapt epic fantasy materials in the wake of Game of Thrones.
And there are many more out there, such as The Lunar Chronicles, Serpent & Dove, and A Curse So Dark and Lonely, with the same potential. Yet the only adaptation we have yet to see come to fruition from this trend in literature is Shadow and Bone, only for it to meet an early cancelation partially due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This coincides with the various streaming services' obvious interest in finding ready-to-adapt epic fantasy materials in the wake of Game of Thrones, producing The Witcher, The Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, and His Dark Materials.
Why The Streaming Services Aren't Seizing The Chance To Adapt YA Fantasy When It Makes No Sense
The Producers Who Wanted A Game Of Thrones Replacement Certainly Had It
Inexplicably, the industry hasn't fully realized or acted upon an entire space of modern fantasy young adult and new adult literature with very cinematic undertones primed for adaptations. It is possible that the producers, directors, and writers viewed things such as A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Folk of the Air as more lowbrow than Game of Thrones, and more likely to bring upon it negative reviews that would only cost them money. Such adaptations as The Wheel of Time and His Dark Materials are admittedly based on classics of the fantasy genre considered to be of high quality.
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Many shows failed to replace Game of Thrones due to the genre being too similar or too different, a shorter story, and other industry concerns.
The writers' strikes and the COVID-19 pandemic may also have proved to be delays some of these projects were unable to recover from. Shadow and Bone never amassing the viewership it needed for Netflix to justify its continuation also couldn't have been an encouraging sign for other companies — yet this still only happened relatively recently. This market has only been growing since the mid-2010s, and despite what kind of entertainment it might be, it is one with demand which the industry has only been sitting on.
YA Fantasy May Now Be Finally Getting Its Day In The TV Industry
A Few YA & New Adult Romantasy Adaptations May Finally Be Taking Off
However, maybe things are starting to look up for the materials that came out of the last decade of young adult fantasy, and with new adult being a more established market niche now, distributors might be willing to adapt it as it is in the source material. Amazon Prime seems to be moving forward with the Fourth Wing TV show, one of the more recent additions to the line-up. Children of Blood and Bone is cast and filming, and even Sarah J. Maas' universe could get picked up by someone who will actually invest in it.
I don't think it's entirely too late, and we could still see a massive surge in young adult and new adult fantasy adaptations in movies and TV.
In short, I don't think it's entirely too late, and we could still see a massive surge in young adult and new adult fantasy adaptations in movies and TV. With many of them having been left on the page for so long, fans have had years to enjoy their favorite world as books-only material. Now they may be getting entirely new versions of these stories, which they hopefully love just as much. A Court of Thorns and Roses is still one of the leading titles in this space, and once I see that adaptation, I will believe the whole thing is really happening.
Source: Variety, Deadline
