Universal Pictures has chosen a director for the studio’s adaptation of the Laini Taylor YA fantasy novel Daughter of Smoke & Bone.  Heat Vision reports that commercials director Michael Gracey will take the helm of the project, which revolves around a 17-year-old art student whose father sends her all over the world collecting human teeth for a mysterious purpose.  The young woman soon realizes that she’s part of an ancient struggle between angels and demons, and finds herself in a love affair with a warrior angel.  Stuart Beattie (Collateral) initially penned the screenplay with subsequent rewrites by Taylor, and Joe Roth (Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman) will produce.

Gracey had been developing a China-set take on Snow White at Disney before the Mouse House put a hold on that project.  He’s expected to make his feature debut with the Elton John biopic Rocketman, starring Tom Hardy, and he’s also attached to helm Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman on Earth.  No word on how soon Smoke & Bone might come to fruition, but Universal is likely eager to get in on the YA craze.  Read a synopsis for the novel after the jump.

Here’s the synopsis for Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone:

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

When one of the strangers–beautiful, haunted Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself? [Amazon]