Tomi Adeyemi’s reported decision to stop turning her books into movies gives the discussion around Children of Blood and Bone a consequence beyond a single adaptation. According to Variety’s report, her experience on the film’s set left her sobbing, and she says she will “never” adapt her books into movies again. She also states, “I still don’t plan to watch it.”
That last remark naturally attracts attention. But the decision about future books carries a different weight: it concerns whether a novelist wants to enter this kind of collaboration again. For an industry that presents adaptation announcements as occasions for celebration, an author’s refusal to repeat the experience deserves serious consideration.
This is spoiler-free commentary on authorship and adaptation, not a review of the finished film. These reported statements do not establish what happened in particular production conversations, who held particular decision-making powers, or how the movie handles its characters. They do provide a reason to examine what a successful adaptation relationship should mean.
The consequential word is “never”
There are two distinct decisions in Adeyemi’s remarks. Declining to watch Children of Blood and Bone concerns her relationship with this film. Rejecting future movie adaptations concerns the path she wants her writing career to take. Collapsing those decisions into a single expression of dissatisfaction misses the broader significance.
Our earlier discussion of how readers might respond to Adeyemi’s decision not to watch focused on audience expectations. The question here belongs earlier in the process: what makes an adaptation a collaboration an author would willingly undertake again?
My view is that this should count as one measure of a production’s success. A completed movie answers whether a project reached the screen. It cannot, by itself, answer whether the people who originated its story found their participation worthwhile. Those outcomes may overlap, but neither guarantees the other.
The word “never” expresses the position being reported now. It does not require speculation about whether Adeyemi might change her mind someday. Treating her stated boundary as a negotiating posture would assign a motive the report does not establish.
A movie deal is not a novel’s graduation ceremony
Adaptation is often discussed as a book’s next destination: a story finds readers, attracts filmmakers, and becomes something larger. There is an appealing narrative of expansion in that sequence. There is also an assumption worth challenging—that reaching the screen necessarily completes or elevates a literary achievement.
A novel already offers a finished artistic experience. Its pace, language, access to thought, and relationship with the reader are substantive features of that experience. A film can create something remarkable from those materials, but its existence does not make the book more complete.
Adeyemi’s reported refusal to pursue further movie adaptations makes room for a less automatic definition of opportunity. An author can want a wide readership while deciding that screen collaboration is an experience she does not want to repeat. That choice need not be interpreted as a rejection of ambition.
For movie lovers, this is a useful correction. Enthusiasm for seeing a fictional world onscreen can coexist with respect for the person who prefers to continue building worlds on the page. Access to another version of a story is something to value when it happens, rather than something an author owes an audience.
Author involvement needs a concrete meaning
“The author is involved” sounds reassuring. Yet the phrase leaves several practical questions unanswered. Does involvement mean offering background information? Discussing a screenplay? Giving feedback on changes? Participating in decisions before they become difficult to reverse? These are different forms of work, with different levels of influence.
None of those questions should be mistaken for claims about Adeyemi’s arrangements. Her reported distress does not reveal the terms of her participation. The broader editorial point is that the language used to celebrate adaptations should be specific enough to tell readers something useful.
As a standard for evaluating future announcements, I would look for three distinctions:
- Access: Can the author raise questions with the people making creative decisions?
- Timing: Does that conversation happen while meaningful alternatives remain possible?
- Response: Is there a clear explanation of how the author’s concerns will be considered?
These are proposed measures of useful collaboration, not an account of what did or did not happen on Children of Blood and Bone. They also leave room for disagreement. Listening seriously to a novelist does not require accepting every suggestion; it requires more than displaying the novelist’s presence as evidence of harmony.
Character perspective gives collaboration something specific to protect
The strongest artistic reason to involve a novelist is the possibility of discussing why the story works beneath its visible events. A plot summary can identify what a character does. A deeper conversation can establish what the character believes, what a choice costs, and why a relationship changes.
Consider a hypothetical adaptation that preserves a confrontation but removes the earlier moment explaining a character’s fear. The event survives, yet its emotional meaning may shift. Conversely, a film might replace a passage of internal narration with a performance, an image, or a silence that communicates the same conflict. A substantial alteration can sometimes preserve more than a literal reproduction.
This is where author participation can be especially useful: identifying the relationship between an action and its motivation. Our discussion of the moral stakes an adaptation must preserve explores a related critical concern. Recognizable events matter less when their human consequences become difficult to feel.
That offers a framework for eventually assessing Children of Blood and Bone, without pretending to have assessed it already. A responsible review would examine the film’s actual choices, performances, and dramatic consequences. Invented dialogue or assumed scenes would obscure the very character work that deserves attention.
A successful film would not settle every question
The public discussion can easily become a prediction contest: will the movie succeed, and will its reception vindicate one side? That approach asks reviews or commercial performance to resolve questions they cannot fully answer.
A viewer’s admiration can establish that a film moved that viewer. It cannot establish how an author experienced the production. Equally, a negative review cannot reconstruct a private disagreement or prove why someone left a set upset. Criticism becomes more useful when it identifies the evidence supporting each judgment.
Adeyemi’s reported position therefore has significance independent of any eventual verdict on the movie. It challenges the idea that securing a screen adaptation is sufficient evidence of a rewarding creative outcome. For the author, the experience of participating may shape what opportunities she wants next.
The deeper issue is what collaboration leaves behind. An adaptation creates a film, but it also creates relationships, expectations, and reasons to work together again—or to stop. When the originating author says she will not repeat the experience, a serious account of success has to make room for that fact. The next screen version of a book should be an opportunity its author can meaningfully choose, including the freedom to decide that the page is where the next story belongs.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: September 29, 2026 at 09:15:33 PDT (Los Angeles time)
