Disney picks up film rights to “The Paper Magician” YA book trilogy

PanARMENIAN.Net - Disney has picked up the film rights to The Paper Magician, a book trilogy from Charlie N. Holmberg, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

Allison Shearmur, who was an executive producer on the Hunger Games movies and a producer on Disney's well-regarded live-action version of Cinderella as well the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is on board to produce the adaptation.

On first blush, the story bears a resemblance to the Harry Potter series as it tells of a young conjurer attending a school for magicians set in a whimsical world. But the similarities end there.

The YA series centers on Ceony Twill, a young girl who is a student at the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined. In this world where magicians animate manmade materials, she is disappointed that she has been demoted to learn paper magic despite her dreams of working with metal. But when an all-powerful evil magician rises and her mentor's life is on the line, she must tap into the hidden potential of her new powers.

The Paper Magician, the first book in the series, was published by 47North, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, in September 2014. The second, The Glass Magician, was released in November 2014 and the third, The Master Magician, was released last June.

Holmberg was a Trekkie as a teen and began writing Star Trek fan fiction before majoring in English at Utah's Brigham Young University.