Steve Lightfoot is developing a TV adaptation of The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones with producer RubyRock Pictures and Sony Studios. Deadline reported that RubyRock's Zoë Rocha revealed the early-stage project along with an adaptation of Justin Somper's Vampirates book series, while providing details on Netflix's upcoming project based on Geek Girl by Holly Smale.
Lightfoot, who was the showrunner for Apple TV+'s Shantaram and Netflix's The Punisher, is currently writing the pilot for The String Diaries, a project that is part of RubyRock's strategy to adapt novels that may have "slipped the cracks five to 10 years ago" in what is an intensely competitive book market, Rocha said, adding: "Everything is going on pre-empts and is so beyond our price bracket but there is so much content out there that slips through. [Slightly older novels] are a really good place to look."
RubyRock is currently is working with Capricornia Content and Australia's Princess Pictures on an adaptation of the Vampirates novels, with the producers seeking a showrunner.
More immediately, RubyRock said Netflix's Geek Girl has been made with Canada's Nelvana Studios and Aircraft Pictures and will launch on May 30. Starring Emily Carey and Sarah Parish, the project was co-adapted by Smale and is being made in a "bubble of its own," according to Rocha, who hopes to replicate a "fraction of the success" of Netflix YA hit Heartstopper.
"When [Netflix] made Heartstopper they had the pure intent of saying, 'This is a thing we are doing in our bubble' and then it caught the zeitgeist," she said. "We wanted that same feeling of creating something in a little bubble of its own and then seeing what happens."