Disney is morphing a popular book series into a new television series, but even a key figure wasn’t fully on board initially.

It was announced that a new Animorphs TV adaptation was in the works at Disney+. The series is still in the early stages, but the official logline is that it “follows a group of teenagers who uncover a hidden threat lurking beneath their everyday lives, all while juggling relationships, curfews, and the chaos of High School.” The Scholastic books were written by the married duo K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant, who just shared their reaction to the news.

In a post on Bluesky, Applegate, at first, expressed “concerns that the project is under-resourced.” Despite some initial hesitation, she and her husband were relieved because “one of the producers, Sev Ohanian, is a friend, as well as a genuine Animorphs fan. If anyone can make it work, he can. Fingers crossed.”

Sinners director Ryan Coogler is executive producing with Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian for Proximity Media, alongside Bayan Wolcott, who is attached to write. Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman will also be executive producers via Scholastic, which published the novels that ran from 1996 to 2001.

It’s understandable why the duo were initially worried, given past attempts at adapting Animorphs. While there were film rumors going back to 2015, it wasn’t until 2020 that Scholastic Entertainment and Picturestart confirmed a live-action movie was in development. The Animorphs authors were initially involved with the project, but in October of the same year, Grant and his wife “decided not to participate further” because of “creative differences.“

After that post, he elaborated in a different post that “Decisions we had hoped to be involved in were made without us – as is their legal right. But we have a policy: we don’t claim or accept credit for things we didn’t actually do.” Grant continued, “Since we weren’t actually doing or contributing anything, we bailed.” Six years later, that movie has yet to come to fruition.

Even though the movie has yet to materialize, the Animorphs books were once adapted into a Nickelodeon series that aired from September 1998 to March 2000. The main cast featured Shawn Ashmore, Brooke Nevin, Boris Cabrera, Nadia Nascimento, and Christopher Ralph. Unfortunately, the first TV show failed to impress the book creators.

Eleven years after the show ended, Applegate was disappointed with the series in a Reddit AMA, saying, “We were not huge fans of the TV show. We wanted it to be animated because with kid actors, animals and FX it had every expensive thing in Hollywood. We knew Nick didn’t have the kind of money to make it good.” Given this response, it’s clear that the authors haven’t had great experiences with their stories being adapted to the screen.

However, Disney’s track record with YA book-to-series adaptations has been generally promising. Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan, who disapproved of the original movies, has been thoroughly impressed with the TV series, which is now working on season 3. The live-action Eragon series is in the prepping stages. While Disney wasn’t able to replicate that success with Goosebumps, which was cancelled after two seasons, the Animorphs series may see better odds, especially with the team involved with the process.

While it is in early development, Coogler is already knee-deep on a pilot for his X-Files reboot, starring Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel. On the other hand, Wolcott worked on shows like Hulu’s The Testaments and The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Aside from movies and TV attempts, Animorphs has expanded into a few video games, including Animorphs: Know the Secret and Animorphs: Shattered Reality. The series has also turned into six graphic novels so far.

There are a total of 54 books and ten companion pieces, but the latter novels were written by ghostwriters. The main premise is that a group of five teenagers can transform into any animal they touch as a response to a parasitic alien threat known as the Yeerks, invading Earth. A dying Andalite race, who have faced the Yeerks, helped grant those powers to the teens.

As of writing, there is no release set for the new Animorphs adaptation.

Release Date

1998 – 2000-00-00

Network

YTV, Global TV, Nickelodeon

Directors

Ron Oliver, Graeme Lynch, William Fruet, Don McCutcheon, Shawn Levy, Timothy Bond, Stacey Stewart Curtis

Writers

Marc Scott Zicree, Neal Shusterman, Jessica Scott, Carl Ellsworth, Scott Peters, Jeff Vlaming, George Melrod, Billy Brown