Children of Blood and Bone already has a complicated legacy

The end of 2026 is barreling towards us, which means it’s time to start thinking about 2027 and the movies that the new year will bring. One of the biggest curiosities of 2027 is Children of Blood and Bone, an adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s best-selling YA/romantasy novel. The film adaptation comes from Gina Prince-Bythewood and stars an A-list cast of Black actors, headed by Thuso Mbedu, the visuals look incredible, and I am always down for a movie about magic.

But the film is also the center of a controversy because as an author, Adeyemi doesn’t seem to be enjoying the adaptation process. Duana wrote about this in a newsletter and broke down the inherent tension of adaptation, when an author must let go of their work and let it morph into something new to thrive in a new medium, which is easier said than done but is also a crucial element of adaptation. A movie is going to be different than a novel, it just is. So, I’m curious to see the movie and then read the book, and at this point I do want to do it in that order, because I want to see if the movie makes sense without the additional context provided by the book. The movie should be able to stand on its own, so I want to experience the film first, and then see how it stacks up against Adeyemi’s novel.

But I am also interested to see how the romantasy crowd reacts to a large-scale blockbuster adaptation of this novel. When I think romantasy, I think of willowy nineteen-year-old heroines who bumble their way into the bed and heart of an ancient vampire/faerie/werewolf king in a vaguely medieval European setting. I don’t usually think of romantasy set in an African-inspired kingdom, because that’s not the popular image of romantasy, and yet, Children of Blood and Bone is beating Fourth Wing and ACOTAR and all the problematic age gap faerie romances to the big screen.

I’m not inspired by the January release date, as I have mentioned before, January is a boneyard where movies go to die. It is coming from the mutant Paramount/Skydance entity, though, which might also account for the January release date—I don’t think Black-led films about powerful Black kingdoms of magic and adventure are super high up on the Ellison priority sheet. Also not sure how Jeremy Latcham’s meemaw is going to feel about Black witches doing witch things in mass entertainment.

But Children of Blood and Bone looks cool as hell, it has a great cast, and a director with a proven track record of directing solid genre/action films. On paper, it has everything working for it, the question is just how it actually turns out, and if book readers will accept it as its own thing, or if it will live forever in the shadow of an author’s disapproval.