Warner Bros. Developing 'Scorpio Races' Fantasy (Exclusive)

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Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg

The hunt for the next Twilight or Hunger Games continues.

Warner Bros has picked up the movie rights to The Scorpio Races, a young adult fantasy novel by Maggie Stiefvater for David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith’s KatzSmith Productions to produce. 

The book, released last week, involves mythological flesh-eating horses from Celtic lore, a scraggy island that hosts an annual race, a young horse trainer and a young woman (the first female to enter the competition) who eventually fall for each other.  

Stiefvater is the author of the best-selling Shiver trilogy, which are young adult novels revolving around werewolves and first love. The trilogy has more than 1.6 million copies in print in the US. 

KatzSmith’s deal is relatively new at Warners but it’s been quite active. Last month it set up the Jonathan Stokes spec Murders and Acquisitions, a Wall Street action comedy, and earlier in October picked up the rights to Alive in Necropolis, a detective story in the real-life cemetery-filled town of Colma, Calif. It's also developing a sequel to Beetlejuice.

Sarah Schechter is overseeing for the studio while Jay Ireland brought the book into KatzSmith and will shepherd for the shingle.

WME repped the author (in conjunction with Laura Rennert) and the producers in the deal.

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