Lightfoot (pictured, center), who served as showrunner for Apple TV+'s Shantaram and Netflix's The Punisher, is currently writing the pilot and the project does not yet have a buyer. Sony Studios is also connected.
Published ten years ago, The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones is a supernatural thriller about a family who comes into possession of diaries passed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century.
Lloyd Jones' debut travels from the present to Oxford in the 1970s to Hungary at the turn of the 19th century and takes us back to a man from an ancient royal family with a consuming passion.
Lightfoot is also working on MGM+/Prime Video's Spider-Man spin-off Noir, a live-action series starring Nicolas Cage.
The String Diaries project is part of RubyRock's strategy to adapt novels that "escaped notice" five to 10 years ago in what is an intensely competitive book market, Rocha said. “Everything is pre-premiering and so out of our price range, but there's so much content that slips through,” she added. “Slightly older novels are a good place to look.
With this in mind, RubyRock is developing a series adaptation of the Vampirates novels, six books published between 2005 and 2011 about twins who are separated at sea and picked up by two very different ships. RubyRock is working with Capricornia Content from LA and Princess Pictures from Australia for the adaptation and the producers are looking for a showrunner.
Rocha praised the "lavish world" Somper had created and said the books represent "everything we're trying to develop at the company", which was launched by the Moone Boy director five years ago.
“We want to make stuff that is entertaining and funny but has some vitamins in the ice cream,” added Rocha. “This is escapist and beautiful but makes you think.”
Much more immediately for RubyRock is Netflix's Geek Girl, the film adaptation of Holly Smale's first novel in a book series about a neurodivergent teenage model, which was made with Canada's Waterside Studios and Aircraft Pictures and opens on Thursday, May 30.
The story, starring Emily Carey and Sarah Parish, follows Harriet Manners, whose life is turned upside down when she is scouted to become a model and she embarks on a life-affirming journey of self-discovery as she balances high school and high fashion.
The show is being made in a “bubble of its own,” Rocha said, but she shared a desire to replicate a “fraction of the success” of Netflix YA smash Heartstopper, coming at a time when YA shows are dominating worldwide streamer charts such as Prime Video’s Maxton Hall – The World Between Us, which has just become Amazon’s most successful international show of all time in its first week.
“When [Netflix] made Heartstopper they had the pure intent of saying, ‘This is a thing we are doing in our bubble’ and then it caught the zeitgeist,” she added. “We wanted that same feeling of creating something in a little bubble of its own and then seeing what happens.”
Geek Girl could represent a quantum leap for neurodivergen representation on television, but Rocha said the creators went to great lengths to ensure the main character's autism was incidental to the plot, while script consultants ensured that they weren't "getting into stereotypes or doing anything reductive."
Smale herself is neurodivergent, but was only diagnosed a few years ago at the age of 39, after writing Geek Girl.
“Harriet is many things and one of those things is neurodivergent but that is not her only defining characteristic,” said Rocha. “We wanted to do a neurodivergent show that makes a large section of the audience feel seen but we also wanted to create something commercial that appeals to everyone.”
The cut-throat world of fashion also takes up a fair bit of Geek Girl’s airspace. For this element, Rocha had tonnes of experience to draw from her father and sister, who are both fashion designers. The team had access to her former BFA Designer of the Year father John Rocha’s archive and used consultants in order to “give as strong a representation across the whole of the fashion industry as possible.”
She acknowledged the fashion world has changed since the days her 70-year-old father was rising through the ranks. “The way models were scouted used to be old-fashioned but this has moved on so much,” she added. “We have a duty of care to young people coming into that world and we wanted to touch on some of those themes of how managing people and looking after talent has shifted. We wanted people to know this is now a world they could work in.”
