American writer Roshani Chokshi’s young adult novel Aru Shah and the End of Time will be adapted as a film by Paramount Pictures, Deadline reported. Chokshi, who has an Indian father and a Filipino mother, is 27 years old. Aru Shah is the first of a planned quartet.
“The studio sees the potential for a franchise that is a cross between Wizard of Oz and Coco, with a touch of Night at the Museum,” Deadline reported. The movie will be produced by Karen Rosenfelt, whose credits include Twilight Saga and Percy Jackson.
Paramount Pictures outbid Netflix for the rights to the novel, about a 12-year old girl of Indian descent who lives at the Museum of Ancient Indian Arts and Culture and claims to own a magic lamp that has the power to end the world. “My parents did an incredible job of inspiring me and my siblings to be voracious readers from the start,” Choksi told Los Angeles Times in an interview in April. “I think a large part of that is because we didn’t learn our parents’ native languages growing up. We only spoke English at home and so the way that we connected to parts of our heritage was oftentimes just through fairy tales and world mythology books.”