Dan Krokos sold "The Planet Thieves" to Warner Brothers.
Deadline says that Warner Brothers, always on the lookout for a franchise, has picked up the rights to “Planet Thieves,” a young adult novel by Dan Krokos. The book will be published next May by Tor/Macmillan.
Here is how they describe the plot:
The book focuses on a young space cadet who finds himself caught in the middle of Earth’s struggle to survive. His ship is attacked by an alien race bent on gaining control of a weapon they’re carrying on board.
They apparently pitched this to WB as “Harry Potter” in space, and WB, who seems to miss Harry Potter like their first love, actually fell for it. I shouldn’t be so hard on them, though–I will concede that it does share a young male protagonist with the Harry Potter books and it does take place in space.
I’ve reached a point where a) I approach the announcement of “the next great YA series” with a great deal of caution, cynicism, and snarkiness and b) I steer clear of any book with “Thief” or “Thieves” in the title. I feel like YA franchise hopefuls have latched upon that word as a super shortcut to mean, “Look! Adventure! Magic!” It feels kind of generic and meaningless to me now. I wonder if any planet genuinely gets stolen by thieves. Congrats to the first author who puts “Burglar” into the title.
The film will be produced by Heyday Films and Benderspink along with Pouya Shahbazian.
