The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks is getting the live-action treatment. StudioCanal and Deadpan Pictures are developing a television series based on Katie Kirby’s nine-book Puffin series, with writers Josie Long and Holly Phillips attached. Long’s credits include Skins; Phillips has written for The Athena, Get Even and Dance Academy. Deadpan’s Ailish McElmeel, whose banner produced Moone Boy and Video Nasty, will produce.
StudioCanal Stories, the in-house book-to-screen label StudioCanal launched in 2024, negotiated the rights. M-K Kennedy and Paul Gilbert oversee for StudioCanal, with Sarah Reese Geffroy overseeing for StudioCanal Stories. StudioCanal Kids & Family will handle worldwide merchandising and licensing.
A pre-sold audience in a crowded kids market
The series follows an 11-and-three-quarters-year-old protagonist through the awkward transition to secondary school. McElmeel has called it a ‘pre-teen Bridget Jones.’
The numbers make it easier for a buyer to say yes:
- Nine books give a writers room a long runway and support a multi-season order.
- 30-plus languages provide a ready international sales story for a global buyer.
- 3M+ copies sold create awareness the marketing team does not have to build from zero.
- Merchandising and licensing through StudioCanal Kids & Family attach a second revenue line.
For platform executives, the appeal is simple. More than 3 million copies sold means some level of built-in awareness; translations in more than 30 languages mean the show can be pitched to local buyers with evidence of cross-border demand.
What it signals about the book-to-screen pipeline
This is not a one-off library pickup. StudioCanal set up StudioCanal Stories in 2024 to turn literary properties into film and television. The label already has the Paddington franchise on the film side and TV adaptations such as War of the Worlds, with How to Stop Time starring Benedict Cumberbatch coming next.
Lottie Brooks extends the strategy into middle-grade and tween live-action, a lane that is chronically under-supplied relative to animation. A live-action series with a universal ’embarrassing adolescence’ premise can travel, but it depends on casting and tone rather than the IP alone.
How media planners should read it
For our audience, the practical takeaway is to treat IP with three tests: audience proof, format flexibility, and ancillary upside. Lottie Brooks clears the first via 3M+ sales, the second via a nine-book runway, and the third via merchandising rights. That makes it a franchise bet, not a prestige gamble. Watch whether the show lands a major streaming or broadcaster partner early; that will be the real signal of demand.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
