Stuart Beattie to Pen DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE for Universal

Collider

Stuart Beattie to Pen YA Adaptation DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE for Universal

By Adam Chitwood

Published Mar 14, 2013

Stuart Beattie to Write DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE. Stuart Beattie will adapt Laini Taylor's YA fantasy novel Daughter of Smoke & Bone.

Some movement is finally taking place on Universal’s adaptation of author Laini Taylor’s popular YA fantasy novel Daughter of Smoke & Bone. The studio bought the rights to the book back in December of 2011 after an intense bidding war, but we haven’t heard anything about the project since. Now Heat Vision reports that Stuart Beattie (Collateral, 30 Days of Night) has been tapped to write the script for the feature film adaptation, with Joe Roth (Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman) onboard to produce. The story centers on a 17-year-old art student whose father sends her all over the world collecting human teeth for a mysterious purpose. The young woman realizes that she’s part of an ancient struggle between angels and demons, and finds herself in a love affair with a warrior angel (as one does).

The story is decidedly fantastical, and it’ll be interesting to see if audiences respond to the similarly fantasy-bent YA adaptations that hit theaters this year like The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and The Host (you can thank The Hunger Games for this YA fantasy boom). As with nearly every YA book series, Smoke & Bone is the first in a trilogy of novels. Hit the jump to read the full synopsis for Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone.

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]