We feel that there are a few resurgences that are happening when it comes to movies and we’re here to embrace them. Two of our favorites being rom-coms and YA movies. We need franchises again. We need movies that make us excited again.
And while yes, we are aware that we have some, we want more. Call us selfish (we’re okay with that) for wanting more. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone has told us that.
If you’ve paid attention to movies long enough, you know that when Temple Hill options or produces a movie based on a book, everyone pays attention. There is no one that knows YA like they do. wiip has optioned R.F. Kuang‘s bestselling fantasy novel Babel and the good news is that it is works for the silver screen.
“We’ve been in love with Babel since we first tore through it – Rebecca is a singular, generational storyteller and we believe this is one of the most transporting, evocative and relevant fantasy novels since Harry Potter,” said wiip’s Lee and Stern.
If you aren’t familiar with the book, you definitely need to read it. The book is about, “1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .”
The book has won many awards including, 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the British Book Award for Best Fiction and Blackwell’s Books of the Year for Fiction. Not to mention the author has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. She was part of 2023 Time 100 Next list and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024. And as if that wouldn’t keep her busy enough, the author also is working towards a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
How she has the time to do all of this, we’ll never know. But we’re excited to see what is next.
