Amazon MGM Studios is turning ND Stevenson’s middle-grade fantasy Scarlet Morning into a live-action film, pairing the Nimona creator with genre director Kate Herron.
Herron, who directed the first season of Disney+’s Loki, is attached to direct and produce through her A Bag of Rats banner. She is writing the script with Kari Granlund. Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, Darlene Caamaño Loquet of Oh My Darlin’ Entertainment and Aubrey Davis of A Bag of Rats are producing; Granlund and Vertigo’s Jakob Pollack will executive produce.
What Scarlet Morning is
Published by HarperCollins imprint Quill Tree Books in 2025, the illustrated novel follows two orphans who stop waiting for their parents and join a pirate crew to save the land of Dickerson’s Sea. It sits in the same broad lane where Stevenson built a following with Nimona, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Lumberjanes.
For Amazon MGM, this is a known author with a recent awards footprint. Nimona was shortlisted for the National Book Award and later became a Netflix animated feature that earned an Oscar nomination for best animated feature.
Why the team matters
The package pulls from established fantasy and family-film talent. Herron has directed episodes of Apple TV+’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles and worked on the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us; she is also attached to Amazon MGM’s The Sims feature. That gives the studio another project with Herron and deepens a relationship that started before Scarlet Morning.
Granlund’s credits include Lady and the Tramp and Godmothered, while Caamaño Loquet previously worked with Lee on Nimona. The film is the first project for both A Bag of Rats and Oh My Darlin’ Entertainment, so the outcome will also be a proof point for two newer production banners.
- Stevenson brings an Oscar-nominated IP track record and a middle-grade fan base.
- Herron brings streaming genre credibility from Loki and The Last of Us.
- Amazon MGM gets another project with Herron ahead of The Sims.
The bigger read
Studios and streamers are still mining illustrated middle-grade fantasy for live-action features because the material arrives with a built-in audience and visual world. The risk is whether Scarlet Morning’s tone translates from page to a broad live-action family audience; the producers are betting that Herron’s mix of fantasy, action and character work is the right bridge.
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the signal is simple: don’t slot this as a kids-only title too early. If the Nimona fan base ages into their teens and twenties, Scarlet Morning could sit closer to four-quadrant fantasy than to a children’s matinee.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
