Wesley Chu’s ‘War Arts Saga’ Martial Arts Fantasy Novels To Get TV Series Adaptation By Jason Ning, Uta Briesewitz, Original Film & Sony TV
By Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
@DeadlineNellie
https://deadline.com/wp-content/uplo...1&h=383&crop=1
Jason Ning and Uta Briesewitz
Photos courtesy of UTA
EXCLUSIVE: Neal H. Moritz’s Original Film (The Boys) and Sony Pictures Television have acquired the rights to the upcoming War Arts Saga fantasy novel trilogy by The Lives of Tao bestselling author Wesley Chu to adapt it for television. The three books are set to be published by Del Rey in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Jason Ning (Lucifer, The Expanse) is attached as writer, executive producer and showrunner. Uta Briesewitz (The Wheel of Time, Westworld, Stranger Things) will direct and executive produce.
War Arts Saga is set in a world where martial arts are magic, and a grandmaster takes a spoiled would-be hero under her wing to fulfill his destiny of defeating an immortal god-king and ending a centuries-long war. It’s a wide-ranging, grounded fantasy epic that constantly subverts classic fantasy tropes by pitting themes of prophecy, religion, and destiny against the absurdity and reality of life in a fictional 2nd Century world.
Moritz and Original’s Head of TV Pavun Shetty executive produce. Chu also executive produces. Sony Pictures Television is the studio. The project stems from Moritz’s overall deal with Sony TV for his Original Film.
Ning most recently served as executive producer on Lucifer and supervising producer on The Expanse.
Briesewitz’s episodic directing credits include Stranger Things, Westworld, The Deuce and Jessica Jones. She is the director of the first two episodes of Amazon’s high-profile upcoming fantasy series The Wheel of Time.
Chu is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author with ten published books. In 2015, he won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer and is considered one of the hottest writers in the Science Fiction & Fantasy genre. His debut, The Lives of Tao, won the Young Adult Library Services Association Alex Award and was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction. In 2019, Robert Kirkman tapped Chu to write The Walking Dead: Typhoon, the first Walking Dead novel set in Asia. In September 2020, he published The Lost Book of the White, co-written with Cassandra Clare, the second book in the Eldest Curse series focused on Magnus Bane, a 400-year-old bisexual half-Asian warlock, set in the popular Shadowhunter universe.
Original Film is currently producing with Sony Pictures TV The Boys, which is heading into its third season on Amazon, and upcoming YA horror series I Know What You Did Last Summer, based on the hit 1997 slasher film, also for Amazon.
Chu is repped by Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company and Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. Ning is repped by UTA, Gotham Group and Morris Yorn. Breisewitz is repped by UTA.
