'The Spiderwick Chronicles' Series Finds New Home At Roku

Disney+ abandoned the adaptation of the children's fantasy books in May

The The Spiderwick Chronicles second-chance adaptation of a streaming series that Disney+ relinquished has had a successful shop-around. It’s landed at The Roku Channel after six weeks of searching for a new home.

Roku will be the exclusive domestic home for the new adaptation of the children’s fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, with it premiering in early 2024. The acquisition makes it Roku’s most ambitious series pretty much by default with the free, ad-supported streamer’s scripted slate largely coming from the Quibi content library it acquired in 2021. The series stars Lyon Daniels as Jared Grace, Noah Cottrell as his twin brother Simon Grace, Mychala Lee as older sister Mallory Grace, Joy Bryant as their mother Helen Grace, Jack Dylan Grazer as the voice of Thimbletack and Christian Slater as villain Mulgarath.

Disney+ originally ordered The Spiderwick Chronicles but abandoned it when Disney was cutting costs by removing dozens of programs from both it and Hulu, pruning in favor of focus on content curation and Disney-owned properties. An additional reason given has found to be a tonal darkness darker than most of what the streamer offers. It’s seemingly lost out to Goosebumps (which premieres this Friday on both Disney-owned streamers) because while that series comes from Disney Branded Television and Sony Pictures Television, The Spiderwick Chronicles comes primarily from Paramount Television Studios as well as 20th Television. It was Paramount’s TV President Nicole Clemens who led the charge in getting the series its new home.

“It is an honor to bring The Spiderwick Chronicles, a spectacular adventure-filled story led by the incredible Christian Slater and Joy Bryant, exclusively to The Roku Channel,” said Brian Tannenbaum, the Head of Originals at Roku Media. “We cannot wait to introduce this exquisitely crafted series, imagined by a world-class creative team, to millions of streamers.”

Clemens meanwhile said “We are elated that The Spiderwick Chronicles has found a new home and want to thank The Roku Channel for their passionate partnership. Our showrunner Aron Eli Coleite has crafted a beautiful series full of all the enchantment that made the books so beloved, and we can’t wait for audiences to meet these wonderful characters.”

The Spiderwick Chronicles book series sold 20 million copies in over 30 countries. It 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, Jared, Simon, and 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 is executive produced by Coleite, Kat Coiro, director of the first two episodes of the series, as well as DiTerlizzi, Black, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, D.J. Goldberg, Julie Kane-Ritsch and Grace Gilroy. Paramount Global Content Distribution distributes the series internationally. Roku will also be premiering the second season of a series abandoned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the former TBS series Chad starring Nasim Pedrad, early next year as well. It comes a year and a half after it was supposed to premiere at its old home and nearly 3 years after the first season finale.

Source: Deadline