RKO Pictures is branching into television, picking up the screen rights to a young adult novel titled False Memory with the aim to develop a TV adaptation.
The debut novel by Dan Krokos will be published by Disney*Hyperion in November 2012. It’s the first book of a planned trilogy.
False Memory follows four friends with supernatural powers, raised to be soldiers, who escape their government training facility in search of a normal teenage existence.
RKO’s Kevin Cornish identified what he saw as a deluge of YA genre books being furiously developed as features in the wake of the success of The Twilight Saga and (Lionsgate hopes) The Hunger Games. The publishing world is spending upwards of seven figures to acquire the books, while studios spend almost an equal amount for the movie rights.
“The networks aren’t as oversaturated as the studios, and by going into TV, this will differentiate False Memory from the other projects,” says Cornish, who will act as exec producer with RKO’s Vanessa Coifman. “This will also allow us to fill the gap in the teen sci-fi market created by shows like Smallville going off the air.”
The duo is now meeting with showrunners.
Krokos is repped by Pouya Shahbazian of FinePrint Literary Management.
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