Author David Anthony Durham reports that Relativity Media has bought the film rights to his fantasy novel Acacia: Book One: The War with the Mein, which Doubleday published in 2007. Writer Andrew Grant is expected to adapt the book. The project will be produced by Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh. Relativity’s Tucker Tooley and De Luca Productions‘ Michael De Luca and Zach Schiff-Abrams (who was responsible for bringing the book to their attention) will be executive producers.
Durham synopsizes the book thus: “Leodan Akaran, ruler of the Known World, has inherited generations of apparent peace and prosperity, won ages ago by his ancestors. A widower of high intelligence, he presides over an empire called Acacia, after the idyllic island from which he rules. He dotes on his four children and hides from them the dark realities of traffic in drugs and human lives on which their prosperity depends. He hopes that he might change this, but powerful forces stand in his way. And then a deadly assassin sent from a race called the Mein, exiled long ago to an ice-locked stronghold in the frozen north, strikes at Leodan in the heart of Acacia while they unleash surprise attacks across the empire. On his deathbed, Leodan puts into play a plan to allow his children to escape, each to their separate destiny. And so his children begin a quest to avenge their father’s death and restore the Acacian empire—this time on the basis of universal freedom.”
Variety quotes Kavanaugh as saying the book has “great franchise potential. It has already generated such a huge response across the world.”