Disney-Hyperion has acquired the next two installments in two book series by Ally Carter: Heist Society and Gallagher Girls. Catherine Onder will edit both books. Uncommon Criminals, the second book in the Heist Society series, releases on June 21, 2011; the fifth book in the Gallagher Girls series will be published in spring 2012. More than 1.6 million books are in print of the two series combined. The deal was negotiated by Stephanie Lurie at Disney-Hyperion and Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency.
Lurlene McDaniel, author of more than 70 YA novels, signed a two-book deal with her longtime editor, Beverly Horowitz at Delacorte Books for Young Readers. The lead title in the deal, The Year of Luminous Love, tells of three friends during the summer before they leave for college, and chronicles the trials and tribulations they face in their family and romantic lives. Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency brokered the deal for North American rights.
CBS Films has acquired rights to Marie Lu's YA fantasy/adventure novel Legend. Putnam will publish Legend, the first in what Lu has planned as a trilogy, in November 2011. CBS Films has the rights to the entire trilogy as well as any sequels and spinoffs. Set in a dark future, North America has split into two warring nations. The story follows Day, a young Robin Hood, and June, the teen prodigy hired to hunt him down.
Twentieth Century Fox Animation will team with producer Shawn Levy on a film adaptation of Roger Hargreaves’s Mr. Men books. Hargreaves wrote 48 Mr. Men books, each of which featured a new character with a dominant trait, such as Mr. Tickle, Mr. Happy, Mr. Greedy and Mr. Nosey; the first six titles were published in 1971, and more than 100 million copies have been sold worldwide.
Universal Pictures and Strike Entertainment have acquired film rights to 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher as a star vehicle for Selena Gomez. In the 2007 novel from Razorbill, a boy finds a box of cassette tapes recorded by a girl he’d had a crush on; the tapes explain to 13 people how they played a role in her death.
