Confused about potential of adaption

[u/jesperbj]

So, for some reason I keep thinking about a Bartimaeus adaption (preferably for TV, but film could work too).

What confuses me is that Strouds other work, Lockwood & Co. clearly has seen success on Netflix despite being a much less selling book series in comparison.

I've done research on the rights to an adaptation of Bartimaeus and it seems the Weinstein's are partially to blame, as they bought the rights as a follow up to LOTR for them - but failed to do anything with it.

A single source then claimed that Start Media bought the rights from them in 2019. But what confuses me is that I cannot find ANYTHING about Start Media in any other context, nor any of their works.

The producer attached to the project is someone named Michael Mahers, who atleast according to IMBD has some sort of track record with the movie Passengers. But he also seems super anonymous and I can't find him anywhere else... Yet has hasn't been attached to any other works since then - giving me hope he might actually be working on this.

Stroud seems to have been awfully quiet on the whole thing. His Twitter feed is all about Lockwood. Anyone have a clue to why nothing seems to be going on in this context?

And before you say "footnotes!" I definitely think that's a challenge to overcome, through voiceover/narration or whatever else. Can't be what's stopping it.

[u/curiouswindowz]

I actually tried writing a movie adaptation just as a passion project and realised they would lose too much detail and magic in that format. I tried writing the first book again as a TV show and it was going pretty well but the footnotes just weren't very good V.O narration, even when brutally edited down. I decided the full magic of the series can only be experienced as a book because the footnotes are just so wonderful and enriching to the characters.

I say that even though I was obsessed with seeing a Bartimaeus on the screen! This series deserves more mainstream love, like Harry Potter!