'Red Queen': Exclusive Sequel Cover Reveal and Movie News
It’s a bloody day in the book world… and that’s a good thing. After spending 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen is just about ready for movie adaptation, likely directed by Elizabeth Banks. But first, the YA novel needs a sequel and that sequel, Glass Sword, needs a cover, and that cover needs to be exclusively revealed right here, right now:
Inspired by Marvel’s X-Men, the hot series is set in a world where the wealthy, powerful, silver-blooded elite — who have unique abilities like summoning fire and mind-control — rule over the destitute, average red-blooded humans. The action of the first novel kicks off when 17-year-old Red Mare Barrow discovers she too has a special power and can control lightning. When she’s thrust into the royal family, she takes the opportunity to go undercover for the Scarlet Guard, a growing rebel army, and finds she has a friend among them: her Silver betrothed, Prince Maven.
When Glass Sword opens, Maven has betrayed Mare and his brother, Cal, and the two have been rescued by the Scarlet Guard. In addition to fighting the segregation that torments the red-blooded masses, Mare will be seeking out other Reds like her. Where the first book cover showed an upside-down crown dripping red blood, the new one follows suit, this time with a crown made of glass swords and dripping both red and silver blood, a symbol, Aveyard told us, meant to show that “both sides are going to have problems this time around.”
Given its timely subject matter, it should come as no surprise that the first novel is already in development at Universal, with Elizabeth Banks in talks to direct.
“Elizabeth Banks is circling the project which is pretty insane,“ Aveyard told Yahoo Movies. "Not just because she’s so talented and so smart but [because] we’ve managed to have a female studio executive [Donna Langley] and then a female screenwriter [Gennifer Hutchinson] and now a fantastic female director hopefully coming on board.” Banks’s Hunger Games bona fides are also a big draw, according to Aveyard: “She knows the scope of YA, and how intense and really involved the fans are, which is always the No. 1 thing with YA. … I think she knows how to honor the fans of the world as best as she can. So fingers crossed. I don’t know anything about casting. People always ask me who I would cast and my honest answer is that I have no idea.”
Aveyard, who admits she’s “really into summer blockbusters” and refers to herself as a “Star Wars nut,” certainly has a cinematic and visual background. She recently completed and sold a screenplay with Marvel’s Stan Lee called Eternal.
Red Queen was released in February of this year. The sequel, Glass Sword, arrives February 9, 2016.
