In 1996, Katherine Applegate and her husband, Michael Grant, launched the first book in the Animorphs series. It ran through 2001 and comprised an impressive 54 main novels, with multiple spinoffs.
Now, Disney+ is adapting the wildly popular books into a new TV show!
The project is still in early development; however, Bayan Wolcott is attached to write and executive produce. Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian will executive produce for Proximity Media. Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman executive produce for Scholastic, which published the original books the show will be based on.
The series, like the books, follows a group of teens who uncover a hidden threat to their everyday lives. All while having to deal with relationships, curfews, and all the other pitfalls of being a teen.
In the novels, teenagers Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, and Tobias find out Earth is being secretly taken over by the Yeerks, a parasitic alien race. They end up meeting a dying alien of the Andalite race, a group that has been trying to stop the Yeerks. They grant the teens the ability to morph into any animal they touch by absorbing the animal’s DNA. Giving them a secret weapon to resist the invasion.
This would be the 2nd television series based on Animorphs, the 1st is by Nickelodeon in 1998 and ran for 2 seasons. There was an attempt at a feature film that never came to fruition.
We’ll keep you posted on updates about the Disney+ series as the project develops.
