Lucasfilm Quietly Drops Previously Announced Anti-Cop Film Project

It was recently reported by Deadline that Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to develop a trilogy of films based on Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling novel Children of Blood and Bone. As Itchy Bacca reported back in late 2020, Lucasfilm had the rights and was developing the anti-police fantasy film project.

Disney decided to let the rights lapse, leading to a bidding war between studios like Universal, Amazon, and Netflix, but Paramount won out. The offer included a seven-figure screenwriting guarantee for Adeyemi, as well as a guaranteed theatrical release. Adeyemi will also be writing the screenplay and executive producing the film, giving her immense creative control over the adaptation of her book.

When Itchy reviewed the Adeyemi’s Twitter feed, he found several troubling posts that support the idea that the writer is a cop-hating racist.

He also found that she seems to have a problem with police.

While those are the author’s personal feelings, reviews of Tomi’s book on Amazon reveal how anti-cop the books actually are.

It’s unclear why exactly Lucasfilm let the rights to this project lapse, especially given the considerable interest it has drawn from other interested studios, but I would guess that production delays and other factors related to the Covid-19 pandemic could easily be to blame. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adeyemi’s involvement was a significant factor as well, given that she’ll now be writing and executive producing the movie. Regardless, this is one less project in the works at Lucasfilm, and it was a rare non-Star Wars one at that. With Indiana Jones 5 and the Willow series coming there are other non-Star Wars projects in the works from the studio, but it remains (and will always be) mostly focused on its premier franchise.