MIPCOM: ‘The Mortal Instruments’ to Return as TV Series

After stalling at the box office, The Mortal Instruments is coming back. As a television series.

Constantin Film, the production company that controls the rights to Cassandra Clare‘s best-selling YA fantasy franchise and which produced The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones film, is relaunching Mortal Instruments as a high-end drama series.

Constantin has hired Ed Decter, whose writer-producer credits include Helix, Unforgettable, In Plain Sight and The Client List, as the showrunner for the Mortal Instruments series. The project is currently in development, with Constantin planning to begin production next year. No broadcast partners are yet attached to the series.

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Constantin had originally planned to turn Clare’s fantasy series into a feature film franchise but shelved that idea after the first Mortal Instruments film, starring Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, tanked at the box office, earning just $31 million domestically. Constantin, however, insisted it had not abandoned the franchise and planned to return to Mortal Instruments.

“It actually makes sense to do (the novels) as a TV series,” Constantin film and TV head Martin Moszkowicz told THR. “There was so much from the book that we had to leave out of the Mortal Instruments film. In the series we’ll be able to go deeper and explore this world in greater detail and depth.”

The Mortal Instruments series is part of a broader strategic shift at Constantin that will see the German-based company move into English-language television series. Moszkowicz said Constantin is looking at possible television adaptations of several of its English-language movie properties, including period serial killer drama Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and the Resident Evil sci-fi horror franchise.

Constantin’s German television business has been consistently profitable over the years even as its recent English-language films, with the exception of the Resident Evil titles, have misfired. In addition to Mortal Instruments, Constantin’s big-budget disaster movie Pompeii and the 3D animated Tarzan, both fizzled at the box office.

Twitter: @sroxborough