From a media release:
Thunderbird Entertainment Group Inc. (TSXV:TBRD) (“Thunderbird” or the “Company”), a global multiplatform entertainment company, is thrilled to confirm that author Cherie Dimaline will work with TV writer and producer Jennica Harper to adapt Dimaline’s  award-winning novel, The Marrow Thieves, for television. The series will be produced by the Company’s scripted division with Dimaline and Harper set to executive produce alongside Alexandra Raffé and Ivan Fecan, who is Thunderbird Entertainment’s Executive Chair of the Board.
The Marrow Thieves is set in a dystopian future where Earth has been ravaged by climate change. Wanted for their bone marrow, which contains the lost ability to dream, North American Indigenous people are being hunted by government recruiters and used as unwilling donors. The story centers on Frenchie, a highly resourceful Indigenous teenager, and his companions, who together embark on a journey to the old lands in the hopes of surviving and reuniting with loved ones.
Dimaline is a Métis author and editor whose fiction has been anthologized internationally. Renowned for many accomplishments, her most recent novel, The Marrow Thieves, won the Governor General’s Award for English-language children’s literature and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers in 2017, the same year it was named a Native American Library Association Honor Book. Last year, The Marrow Thieves won the Sunburst Award, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, and the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature. The Marrow Thieves has also been a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and the Ontario Library Association’s White Pine Award. Singer Jully Black represented the book on CBC’s 2018 Canada Reads, and it was later recognized as the bestselling Canadian book by CBC Books that same year. The Marrow Thieves has been a Canadian bestseller for over a year and continues to hold a spot on the Globe and Mail Canadian fiction list, nearly two years after publication.
Harper is a Vancouver-based TV writer and producer, whose background includes work on the current hit crime drama Cardinal, ABC summer thriller Somewhere Between, and popular crime drama Motive, among others. Most recently, she served as the co-creator, writer and showrunner on the comedy Jann, a fictitious take on the life of Jann Arden, which will premiere later this year. She has been nominated for a Canadian Screen Award and is the recipient of both a WGC Award for Screenwriting and a Leo Award.
In addition to being a Canadian bestseller, The Marrow Thieves is set to be published in the United Kingdom and Australia, as well as translated into German and French. It will also be a spotlight book at the 2020 Frankfurt Bookfair.
