EXCLUSIVE: is developing a TV adaptation of Stephen Lloyd Jones’ The String Diaries with Geek Girl producer RubyRock Pictures and Sony Studios.
RubyRock boss Zoë Rocha revealed the early-stage project to Deadline alongside an adaptation of Justin Somper’s Vampirates book series, while lifting the lid on Netflix‘s upcoming Geek Girl adaptation.
Lightfoot, who show-ran Apple TV+’s Shantaram and Netflix’s The Punisher, is currently penning the pilot and the project doesn’t yet have a buyer. Sony Studios is also attached.
The String Diaries was published a decade ago and is a supernatural thriller following a family that come into possession of diaries handed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century. Lloyd Jones’ debut extends from the present day to Oxford in the 1970s to Hungary at the turn of the 19th century, tracing back to a man from an ancient royal family with a consuming passion.
Lightfoot is also working on MGM+/Prime Video’s Spider-Man spin-off Noir, a live action series that is set to star Nicolas Cage.
Books that have “slipped the cracks”
The String Diaries project speaks to RubyRock’s strategy to adapt novels that may have “slipped the cracks five to 10 years ago” in what is an intensely competitive book market, Rocha said. “Everything is going on pre-empts and is so beyond our price bracket but there is so much content out there that slips through,” she added. “[Slightly older novels] are a really good place to look.”
With this in mind, RubyRock is developing a series adaptation of the Vampirates novels, six books published between 2005 and 2011 about twins who get separated at sea and are picked up by two very different ships. RubyRock is working with LA’s Capricornia Content and Australia’s Princess Pictures on the adaptation, and the producers are seeking a showrunner.
Rocha praised the “lavish world” created by Somper and said the books stand for “everything we are trying to develop at the company,” which was launched five years ago by the Moone Boy exec.
“We want to make stuff that is entertaining and funny but has some vitamins in the ice cream,” added Rocha. “This is escapist and beautiful but makes you think.”
‘Geek Girl’
Far more immediately for RubyRock is Netflix’s Geek Girl, the adaptation of Holly Smale’s first novel in a book series about a neurodivergent teen model, which has been made with Canada’s Waterside Studios and Aircraft Pictures and will launch on May 30.
Starring House of the Dragon’s Emily Carey and Industry’s Sarah Parish and co-adapted by Smale, the story follows Harriet Manners, whose life is turned upside down when she is scouted to be a model and embarks on a life-affirming journey of self-discovery as she balances high school and high fashion.
The show is being made in a “bubble of its own,” Rocha said, but she shared a desire to replicate a “fraction of the success” of Netflix YA smash Heartstopper, coming at a time when YA shows are dominating worldwide streamer charts such as Prime Video’s Maxton Hall – The World Between Us, which has just become Amazon’s most successful international show of all time in its first week.
“When [Netflix] made Heartstopper they had the pure intent of saying, ‘This is a thing we are doing in our bubble’ and then it caught the zeitgeist,” she added. “We wanted that same feeling of creating something in a little bubble of its own and then seeing what happens.”
Geek Girl could be a big leap forwards for neurodivergent representation on TV but Rocha said the creators were at pains to make sure the protagonist’s autism was incidental to the plot, while script consultants helped ensure they didn’t “lean into stereotypes or do anything reductive.”
Smale herself is neurodivergent but was diagnosed only a few years ago aged 39, after she had written Geek Girl.
“Harriet is many things and one of those things is neurodivergent but that is not her only defining characteristic,” said Rocha. “We wanted to do a neurodivergent show that makes a large section of the audience feel seen but we also wanted to create something commercial that appeals to everyone.”
The cut-throat world of fashion also takes up a fair bit of Geek Girl’s airspace. For this element, Rocha had tonnes of experience to draw from her father and sister, who are both fashion designers.
The team had access to her former BFA Designer of the Year father John Rocha’s archive and used consultants in order to “give as strong a representation across the whole of the fashion industry as possible.”
She acknowledged the fashion world has changed since the days her 70-year-old father was rising through the ranks.
“The way models were scouted used to be old-fashioned but this has moved on so much,” she added. “We have a duty of care to young people coming into that world and we wanted to touch on some of those themes of how managing people and looking after talent has shifted. We wanted people to know this is now a world they could work in.”