Fresh off the global success of its Disney collaboration, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Walden Media has snatched up rights to another young adult fantasy lit series. The company has hired scribe David Rothenberg (Modoc) to write a screen adaptation of the first book in the City of the Beasts trilogy by revered Chilean author Isabel Allende.
Set in the lush and treacherous Amazon rain forests, City of the Beasts follows the adventures of 15-year-old Alexander Cold, who joins his eccentric archaeologist grandmother on an expedition to find the mythical “Yeti of the Amazon.’ Alex and 12-year-old Nadia Santos are then kidnapped by the “People of the Mist” and enter a mountain to discover the storied city of El Dorado and the enigmatic “Beasts.”
This first book in the series is being brought to the screen by producer Barrie Osborne, who helped Peter Jackson bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to moviegoers. Alex Schwartz and Jared Mass will oversee the project on behalf of Walden Media.
City of the Beasts became an international bestseller when it was published in 2002 by HarperCollins (English-language edition), which partnered with Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures on the launch of the Chronicles of Narnia film franchise. Allende followed up with the equally successful sequels Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies, published in 2004 and 2005, respectively. The author is best known for her Spanish mysticism-infused novels The House of the Spirits and Of Love and Shadows, both of which have been adapted for the screen.
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