Maker Heyman to produce Alibaba’s Warriors

Harry Potter producer David Heyman will produce Alibaba Pictures’ film adaptation of the children’s book series Warriors.

The collaboration came about when China’s Alibaba Pictures acquired the rights to the British book series about four clans of wild cats. There are 36 books in the main series of the novels, written by a writing team under the name of Erin Hunter and published since 2003, which sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

The first live-action film with computer-generated characters will be an original story, which follows the path of main character Rusty, a pet cat raised by humans, and his books joining a wild cat clan in the forest, Heyman told The Hollywood Reporter in Beijing.

“He’s stigmatized, he’s an outsider, he is not from the forest, he’s lived in the comfort of a human home,” said Heyman. “So it’s about him getting acclimatized into this place, earning his place in spite of great prejudice against him and ultimately rising up.”

Heyman and Alibaba have no idea yet of how many films they will make of the adapta- tion. “The interesting thing about the books is there are such a lot of narratives. And the books are still being written, so there will be as many films as long as we can keep telling interesting stories and the audience is receptive of it. We’ll keep on making them,” Heyman said.

comprise the main series of the novels that sold over 30 million copies, which will be adapted for the proposed films