The team behind The CW’s Golden Globe-winning ‘Jane the Virgin’ are developing a TV series based on Victoria “V.E.” Schwab’s supernatural novel ‘The Archived’. Liz Sczudlo, who serves as a writer on ‘Jane the Virgin,’ will be a writer and executive producer of the series. Jennie Snyder Urman, who was the showrunner and creator of ‘Jane the Virgin.’ will be an executive producer of this project along with Joanna Klein under their Sutton St. Productions banner. Sutton St. has an overall production deal at CBS Television Studios, which will produce ‘The Archived’. Snyder Urman also developed and executive produces ‘Charmed’ for The CW.
Here is the description for the novel:
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.
Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost, Da’s death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself may crumble and fall.
In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.
This sounds considerably darker than ‘Jane the Virgin’ and it appears that Sczudlo and Snyder Urman have heavily modified the story for TV, starting with the main character’s name, which will be Bex not Mac.
“The eldest child in a family of ghost hunters, Bex has trained her entire life for the day she’ll take up the mantle of “the chosen one.” But when her dad dies and her local-weather-girl sister wakes up with the familial powers instead, these night-and-day sisters will have to figure out how to work together and save the world.”
That certainly sounds a lot… wackier.
The CW is losing its flagship show, ‘Supernatural’ which focuses on the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, who often found themselves clashing over their different approaches to battling the forces of evil. That series is set to wrap up with the upcoming 15th season. So ‘The Archived’ could serve as a replacement of sorts, focusing on “night-and-day” sisters.
Have you read the book? How do you feel about it becoming a TV series?
Source: Variety
