With the rise of fantasy series adaptations showing no signs of stopping, it’s little surprise some older YA series are finally getting their long-overdue attention and a shot at the small screen. To the joy of millions of fans, Warrior Cats is the latest to get that treatment.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, A.C. Bradley, the showrunner of Disney+’s Marvel shows, What If? and Ms. Marvel is teaming with Emmy award-winning director Rodrigo Blaas (who helped create the Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia series for Netflix) to craft an animated TV series based on Warrior Cats.
The series is greenlit by publisher Coolabi Group and Chinese online publisher Tencent Video, with early word that the first season adapts the first series of books, The Prophecies Begin. This follows a few failed attempts at an animated movie. Already in production under Original Force, the show is tentatively scheduled to premiere in 2028 on Tencent Video platforms across China and South East Asia, with no word on when it could come to the West.
“We’re excited to partner with Coolabi on Warrior Cats, a franchise that embodies the future of global storytelling,” said Tina Ma, Co-President & COO of Tencent Video in a statement. “Together we’re bringing the beloved Warrior Cats world to new platforms and markets in a way that feels both familiar and fresh, creating an animated series designed to captivate existing fans and win new ones.”
It sounds like the project is getting underway well and is ready to do justice to this massive work!
What is Warrior Cats?
Created in 2003, Warrior Cats is written by a group of authors (including Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Clarissa Hutton, Inbali Iserles, Tui T. Sutherland, Rosie Best, and Conrad Mason) all under the collective pseudonym of Erin Hunter. The concept was created by Holmes, who wrote many of the storylines until her retirement in 2017.
The saga is broken up into nine sub-series “arcs” of roughly six books each, with a total of 108 books, including novellas and short story collections. The storyline follows a pack of five clans of cats living in the wild, all with their own beliefs and themes, often clashing with each other in a battle for survival.
To call the franchise a global phenomenon is underselling it. The books have been translated into 38 languages with over 30 million copies sold worldwide. The series has one of the most intense fandoms around as YouTube is packed with content from fan-made films to drawings and more, along with a Robolox game that’s been played about 728 million times.
Given the massive size and scope of the novels, an animated series could go on for literally years just adapting the existing works or new storylines set in this world. Animation is the best way to make it work with the cat characters, selling the fantasy elements along with some darker adventure and not shying away from the violence. Both Bradley and Blaas have experience adapting works into terrific animation so they should be a perfect pair to bring this saga to life.
It’ll be a couple of years before this adaptation comes to life, but fans of Warrior Cats are ecstatic the series will finally roar on TV!
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