Disney+ Sends 'The Spiderwick Chronicles' Packing Despite An Already Completed Season

The move comes as part of a shift in strategy suddenly focused on profitability

Disney+ will not be the home of the live action series adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles, it has been revealed. It was one of several children’s book adaptations ordered for the streamer over its existence.

This is despite the eight-episode series, more probably intended just as a first season. from Paramount Television Studios and 20th Television having already been completed. Paramount has now taken on shopping it to other potential buyers. Apparently such has been in progress for three months, as it was part of the content write-off in May that saw dozens of already-released Disney+ and Hulu titles, many originals, removed from the platforms.

Disney+’s live-action strategy also has been reassessed, and it seems The Spiderwick Chronicles was dropped because it was an outlier based on an outside studio’s non-Disney IP. The new directive for Disney Branded Television, which is the streamer’s supplier of non-Marvel, Star Wars or National Geographic live-action series, is they will be leaning more heavily into the IP Disney does own. There are exceptions, like There will be exceptions, including the upcoming Goosebumps series, and the new series of Doctor Who and the spinoffs that are in development. There are more shows in the pipeline but with the talent striking greenlight announcements are on hold.

Based on the series of popular children’s fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, The Spiderwick Chronicles is described as a contemporary American gothic coming-of-age story. Upon a move from New York to The Spiderwick Estate, their ancestral home in Michigan with their mother, twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace, and their sister Mallory, find themselves in an alternate, fantastical world deep within the run-down home, filled with goblins, ogres, brownies, boggarts, hobgoblins, trolls, and other creatures. The series was previously adapted into a 2008 film from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies starring Freddie Highmore and Mary-Louise Parker.

While having shed one book adaptation, Disney+ recently announced that another second-chance adaptation series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, will premiere on December 20, 2023. The aforementioned Goosebumps series will be shared between D+ and Hulu, while the Eragon series based on Christopher Paolini The Inheritance Cycle has had no updates since it was announced to be in early development in July 2022.

The series adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles was first announced as part of the Disney+ Day in November 2021. It went into production in September 2022 in Canada, probably in Vancouver, and wrapped filming earlier this year. Christian Slater, who is set to play villain Mulgarath for just the first season, stars alongside Jack Dylan Grazer, Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, Joy Bryant and Mychala Lee. Aron Eli Coleite serves as showrunner and executive produces with DiTerlizzi, Holly Black, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, D.J. Goldberg, Julie Kane-Ritsch and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law director and executive producer Kat Coiro, who also directed two Spiderwick episodes. Nautilus, a British original 10-part live-action adventure series about the origin story of Jules Verne’s iconic character Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, was similarly expelled from having the streamer as its destination.

Source: Deadline