For a moment last spring, Children of Blood and Bone looked like it might be one of the biggest Black fantasy films in years. Now, months before it even reaches theaters, its own author has effectively disowned it and closed the door on any future adaptations of her work.
A day after Paramount released the first trailer for the film adaptation, set to Beyoncé’s “Energy,” Tomi Adeyemi posted a five-minute video that complicated what should have been a straightforward marketing moment. In it, she alleged she had spent roughly a year and a half being antagonized behind the scenes by people involved in the production, without any resolution. She said she left the set of her own film hyperventilating and sobbing, in front of what she called many witnesses, and returned to the US afterward with severe somatic pain and repeated panic attacks, bad enough that she made peace with never being able to watch the finished film.
She did not mince words about what the experience cost her, calling the making of the film the worst thing she has ever had to live through. She stopped short of naming anyone directly, but she made her position on the project unmistakable. She has also rejected the idea of future collaborations with the industry and stated her intention to never speak about the project again, after already laying the groundwork for weeks by writing that she was laying down her sword and officially separating her name because she could not keep being hurt and attacked behind the scenes.
Paramount won a competitive bidding war for the rights of the film in January 2022, after Lucasfilm let its earlier option lapse, and this time Adeyemi secured a seven-figure screenwriting deal along with an executive producer credit and creative control she had not had under the original deal. Gina Prince-Bythewood signed on to direct in December 2023, with a mandate to develop the script alongside Adeyemi, and a three-film deal covering her entire trilogy was reportedly on the table.
Cracks started showing with casting. Despite an open casting call specifically for Nigerian actors that Adeyemi had publicly championed, the final cast drew mostly from Hollywood’s existing star pool, which drew criticism from Nigerian readers over the film’s connection to the book’s Yoruba-rooted source material. Adeyemi initially defended the casting of Amandla Stenberg, but the relationship between the two didn’t survive the shoot, and she later shared a message she had sent the actress asking her not to use her name in interviews again.
Despite everything, Adeyemi has not called for a boycott. She has told followers she does not mind if people go see the film once it is out, saying she wrote the story for the community and still wants Black stories to succeed on screen. Her energy has instead shifted toward print, directing fans back toward buying the trilogy at independent children’s bookstores, and toward promoting her next novel, The Siren, released this week.
Legally, the situation is complicated. Once a studio has locked in a deal like Paramount’s, an author generally cannot pull out of an adaptation already in motion, according to industry experts who have broken down the terms of her contract.
