Divine Rivals Heads to Disney 🎬 Plus a New Bartholomew Tale & a Ninth House Update 📚

Hello, lovely reader

This week’s bookish news has a little of everything: a surprise on the film front, a gargoyle returning to the page, and a goodbye we weren’t hoping for. Pour something warm and settle in.

🎬 Divine Rivals Is Heading to Disney

Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt, the rival journalists who find each other through enchanted letters, have a new home on the big screen. Disney Live Action has acquired the film rights to Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals, as first reported by Deadline.

The road here has been a winding one. Paramount won the rights in a bidding war in June 2025, with Sofia Alvarez set to write the script. Those rights eventually lapsed, and Disney stepped in. Disney isn’t inheriting the earlier screenplay, so a new screenwriter is being sought. There is gentle reassurance for fans, though: producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Pouya Shahbazian remain on board, and Rebecca Ross will executive produce alongside Stephen Shafer.

It’s worth keeping expectations soft for now. This is a rights acquisition, not a production green light. No cast, director, release date or format (theatrical or streaming) has been announced, and the project is in very early development.

Still, it’s lovely to imagine the typewriter keys, the letters crossing the page, and a war between the gods brought to life. Whatever comes next, Iris and Roman’s story has been in readers’ hearts since 2023, and it’s a wonderful time for a reread. If you’d like to curl up with it again, our Divine Rivals Collection is waiting for you.

🪨 Bartholomew Is Getting a Story of His Own

Bartholomew fans, this one is for you. Rachel Gillig’s standalone novella The Sprite and the Gargoyle: A Bartholomew Tale is due in March 2027 from Orbit, with publisher listings showing 16 March.

The story is set one hundred years after the Stonewater Kingdom duology. Bartholomew must once again become a squire and journey across Traum, and the publisher describes the novella as a standalone. Early listings put it at around 144 pages, so it should be a cozy, one-sitting kind of read for a rainy evening. It’s also described as an illustrated edition.

While it stands alone, it will land even more softly if you’ve already walked the road of The Knight and the Moth and The Knave and the Moon. Knowing where Bartholomew has been makes the journey ahead feel all the more tender.

If you’re counting down the months, there’s a lovely way to keep the gothic mood going. Our The Knight and the Moth Collection is made for the autumn nights between now and March.

🕯️ A Quiet Goodbye to the Ninth House Series

This one is a little sad. The TV adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House is reportedly no longer moving forward at Amazon MGM Studios. Reactor reports that sources at the studio confirmed the project is no longer active.

Amazon first won the rights in 2019, just days after the book’s release, with Leigh Bardugo attached to write and executive produce. In 2023 she shared that a pilot script existed. Seven years later, the series that dark academia fans pictured is not going ahead. We haven’t seen an official statement from Amazon or Leigh Bardugo at the time of writing.

Here is the comforting part. Alex Stern’s story is complete and waiting on the page. The trilogy concluded with Dead Beat in September 2026, so there is a whole haunted, secret-society-filled Yale to step back into. Adaptations come and go, and sometimes an unmade series simply returns the story to the readers who love it most.

If an autumn reread of Lethe House sounds right, our Dark Aesthetic Collection is there for those candlelit library evenings.

Whatever you’re reading this week, we hope it feels like a warm place to land.

With love,
The Bean Workshop 🫘