ABC Studios acquires rights to the “Jessica Darling” book series and the pilot script adaptation by Rebecca Serle

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EXCLUSIVE: ABC Studios has acquired the television rights to the bestselling book series Jessica Darling by Megan McCafferty and a pilot adaptation by author/screenwriter Rebecca Serle. Ready Player One Producer Dan Farah and Serle first secured the book rights and then developed the pilot script on a whim before selling it to studios. Serle will co-produce EP with Farah, who will serve as executive producer under his banner Farah Films.

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The five-volume series covers the life and love stories of the title character, Jessica Darlingbeginning with the character’s teenage years in the first two novels and moving on to her college and post-college life in the subsequent novels. McCafferty’s passionate readers were able to grow up alongside the character Jessica Darling, a quality of the book series that will serve the television series well.

Serle is a prolific young screenwriter and novelist whose new novel, In Five Years, recently sold to Simon & Shuster under a pre-emptive deal and will be released in spring 2020. Her latest novel is The Dinner List, which follows her popular young adult book series Famous In Love. This was her first foray into screenwriting, a speculative pilot adaptation of her books that was purchased by Warner Bros. Television and became the popular television series of the same name on Disney’s Freeform, starring Bella Thorne. The series is now available to stream on Hulu. Her first novel, When You Were Mine, is currently in development at Universal Pictures, and an adaptation (titled Rosaline) by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber of The Fault in Our Stars under production at Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps.

Farah most recently produced the Steven Spielberg-directed film Ready Player One, the fantasy series and The Shannara Chronicles. He is currently working on a reboot of Clive Barker’s popular horror series Hellraiser.

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