Film Adaptation: Children of Blood and Bone

This article discusses the process of adapting Tomi Adeyemi's novel 'Children of Blood and Bone' into a film. It explores the challenges of adapting a book into a movie and suggests a potential cast for the film. The article also highlights the popularity and success of the book.

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Film Adaptation
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Children of Blood and Bone
‘The book is always better than the movie,’ has been the response of avid readers who
had watched many of their favorite books into Hollywood movies and this has been the way for
several decades now. Novels and movies are actually two distinctly different species that it is
really difficult to marry them with each other (Balazs p. 2). A novel is essentially an art form
that is complete in all sense and adapting the same into a movie will result in there being very
few commonalities between the two in the form of setting, the cast/characters, and the story with
several other elements being infused newly into it. The ideas presented by an author in a book is
perceived in numerous number of ways with more and more people reading the book and each
them having their own perspective about the same. Essentially, words printed would never ever
tend to change (Hutcheon p. 34).
Adaptations have become a highly popular trend these days with one out of three films
that are made today being an adaptation of some popular literary work. The predominant reason
behind such high degree of popularity in adaptations can be attributed to the appeal such
adaptations offer to the literary text, in terms of the popularity and the plot to the makers of the
movies, in addition to the financial benefits that such makers reap out of such adaptations
certainly.

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The filmmakers are certain about the financial gains that they will reap by transforming
the novel into a film, because the novel would already have been a huge hit in the market – not
just within a specific geography or location, but also at a global level. Besides, the very fact that
the novel is a franchise on its own is something that assures of very negligible risk to the people
investing money into adapting such literary works into movies (Naremore p. 103). It should also
be noted that along with earning well at the box-office and gaining a lot of attention from the
audience mainly on the social networking sites, most of these adaptations in the Hollywood
make it to the Academy Awards.
The current study aims at presenting how it would look when Tomi Adeyemi’s first novel
in here Young Adults (YA) trilogy ‘Children of Blood and Bone: Legacy of Orisha,’ is made
into a movie. The title of the movie would remain the same.
This book by Tomi Adeyemi is undoubtedly Nigerian and is filled with countless number
of myths and legends from Nigeria. There are several places and characters in this book that are
named in traditional Nigerian style, in addition to there also being a strong spiritual connection to
Nigerian roots.
The actual story by Adeyemi is set in the fictionalized village called Orïsha, wherein a
young girl named Zélie Adebola, is introduced as the protagonist of the story. This girl assists
here father in his business of selling fish. Interestingly, her father is a person possessing divine
and magical powers, using which he transforms his daughter into a ‘maji.’ Majis are those
having magical powers, but in the kingdom of Orïsha, these people have always been treated as
second-class citizens for several decades ensuing the extermination in the form of a territory-
wide massacre that resulted in this magic being completed wiped out. This annihilation was an
act of ruthless army of the monarch.

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After the genocide, very few people were left with the possession of such magical
powers, and those few people used to hide their magic, in fear of being attacked by King Saran’s
army. After an unexpected happenstance leads Zelie to learn that the magic is not completed
dead and that it is she alone who can bring that magic back to the kingdom of Orïsha, she
embarks on an expedition to resuscitate and revive the prehistoric magic of the Orïsha clans (Pan
Macmillan).
In the meantime, it is found that the King of Orïsha – King Saran, apparently orders the
killing of all the people in his kingdom possessing magical powers (black magic essentially). It is
important to mention that Orïsha was apparently a land that was subject to the authoritarian rule
by its monarch for several centuries and this book deals with Zélie’s relentless pursuits to restore
the magic of the land to its ancient clans, and subsequently ousting the authoritative monarch
Saran.
Zélie has some very strong memories of the soil of Orïsha having been whined with
magic and there were instances where burners kindled flames, tiders beckoned waves, and even
Zélie’s mother beckoned souls. Apparently, Zélie’s mother is introduced as a Reaper.
However, all this magic unfortunately vanished in a jiffy, on the night when the magic was
eradicated.
With King Saran ordering the killings of all people possessing magical powers, Zélie
becomes an orphan with her mother also being killed along with several other people from her
family and neighborhood and is left with no hope. Finally, Zélie sets in pursuit of bringing the
magic back, for which she takes the help of the princess Amari who apparently is known to be in
the possession of the maji scrolls, notably the last that exists in the Kingdom (White).

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When this book was published initially, it made one of the biggest debuts in the YA
publishing, which can be attributed to the whopping seven-figure deal which Adeyemi succeeded
in signing with the publishing house Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.
The reason behind fantasy continuing to be a huge hit across pop culture is quite evident.
It is essentially because this particular genre offers diversion from the stress of studies or work
and takes the viewers into a completely new world. That is exactly the motive behind the
decision of wanting to adapt Adeyemi’s fantasy novel into a movie. The imagination of the
audience can be set free, with worries surrounding our everyday mundane lives can be set aside
at least for as long as we watch these type of fantasy movies. Regardless of the age, fantasy is
something that can be possibly discovered and rediscovered for several generations of people.
The movie Children of blood and bone would have everything from hobbits and elves to
witches and wizards. Essentially, the movie would portray that the king is behind all evils and
has embarked on a mission of eliminating all the ‘maji,’ because he believes they are evil. It
would be good to show some good majis and a few evil majis indulging freely in their magic and
show of strength, occasionally causing discomfort and even harm. So, majis essentially are not
purely evil that ought to be destroyed and this would be the predominant theme in the movie.
While becomes the first part of the proposed movie which is an adaptation of Adeyemi’s book,
the second part of the movie can be created with a focus on the King’s army putting down all the
majis without proper verification. The purpose of this is to portray the army as bad and not the
majis. This creates some kind of a sympathy form for the majis. The last part of the movie
would portray ice-breaking between the two girls, Zélie and princess Amari and their eventual
discovery of the majis’ book of magic and how they avoid the king’s eyes and do everything to

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recreate the race of majis and to restore the lost magic in the village of Orïsha, and ultimately the
way in which the king gets eliminated with the majis becoming free people again.
The proposed cast of the movie would include Johnny Depp as King Saran, Emma
Watson as Zélie, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as the Amari – the princess. Few of the suggestions
for good majis include Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, and Adam Sandler, among others. Johnny
Depp, who is being proposed to be cast as the ruthless King Saran in this movie, is an infamous
actor known for his numerous weird roles in a number of movies, the most notable of them being
his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. He is the most
appropriate choice when it comes to weird roles. Emma Watson, the actor chosen to be cast as
Zélie, is best known as Harry Potter’s best friends in the role named Hermione Granger in the
Harry Potter movie series. She has become a global icon after being cast in this series of movies
as she enacted her role as Grange very beautifully and would surely do justice to the role of
Zélie. The actors chosen to bring the element of humor into the movie are all experienced actors
known for their wonderful comic sense and they would definitely be an added benefit if casted in
this movie.
With respect to the issue of music, the right choice would be to rope in John Williams of
the Harry Potter movie series fame as he is known for his beautiful tracks that suit fantasy
movies. His use of orchestra in the most classical form along with using several other
instruments that would suit the atmosphere of magic, elves, witches, etc., tends to highlight
different time periods present within the movie. As this movie is also a fantasy movie similar to
Harry Potter, the unique sounds of bells that were found in almost eight of Harry Potter films
would be used even in this movie. Also, William is known for his mastery of changing the mood

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of the movie or scenes with the help of his remarkable music and this would be an added
advantage for the makers of Children of blood and bone.
Adapting a book into a movie is something similar to home renovation, which entails
destroying a house – either partly or completely – from inside, in order to build a new one all
over again and the end result is a marvelous construction. Yet, this process of adaptation is not
devoid of challenges, because it is important to have the basis from the original story presented
by the author while transforming the same and presented it through a new medium, which is
quite challenging (DeBona). However, the case with adaptation of a book into a movie entails
writing screenplay, wherein the original screenplay is never read by the audience. The
screenplay will essentially emerge out of the myriad inputs resulted out of the collaborations
taking place between the film’s director and the creative personnel. This is a process that starts
from the time of pre-production till the time after the whole production is complete, which is
commonly known as the post-production stage. Simply put, screenplay is a document that is
highly fluid and one that constantly evolves (Sandra).
Given the book’s popularity and franchise success, it is certainly going to be adapted in a
wonderful way that is appealing while ensuring the originality of the theme and ideas presented
by Adeyemi in her work are not lost.

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Works Cited
Balazs, Bela. Theory of the Film. New York: Ray, 1953.
DeBona, Guerric. Film Adaptation in the Hollywood Studio Era. Urbana: Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 2010.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Naremore, James. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Pan Macmillan. Children of Blood and Bone - what we know so far. 26 March 2018. Web. 17
April 2019. <https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/fiction/children-of-blood-and-bone-
tomi-adeyemi-book-film>.
Sandra, Judy. Adaptation: From Novel to Film. 27 November 2017. Web. 16 April 2019.
<https://www.raindance.org/adaptation-novel-film/>.
White, Erin. THE CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE’ FILM ADAPTATION FINDS ITS
DIRECTOR. 04 March 2019. Web. 17 April 2019. <https://afropunk.com/2019/03/tomi-
adeyemi-children-blood-bone-film-director/>.