EXCLUSIVE: In heated competition, Netflix has optioned the rights to Callie Hart’s fantasy romance BookTok phenom novel Quicksilver. Deadline hears this is a 7-figure deal.
Elizabeth Cantillon will produce for The Cantillon Company. Hart will be executive producer. WME brokered the deal.
TikTok’s mention of Quicksilver amassed 3 million views in the first two months alone. Hart is the author of the Blood & Roses and Dirty Nasty Freaks series. Quicksilver, the first title in the Fae & Alchemy series, became a number one bestseller on Amazon after debuting last summer. It’s about a human rebel who binds herself to a handsome Fae warrior after inadvertently reopening a gateway between realms.
Publishing rights to the Quicksilver trilogy were sold by WME in a 10-bidder auction to Leah Hultenschmidt at Forever (Grand Central Publishing). UK rights were sold to Molly Powell at Hodderscape. Quicksilver will be re-released in paperback on December 3, 2024, and a deluxe hardcover will follow in Summer 2025. Hart intends to write three books in this series, with book 2 to be published in fall 2025. Globally, translation rights have been sold in 24 languages so far.
This kind of success harkens back to years back, when Stephenie Meyer sold her Twilight novels and Suzanne Collins did the same with The Hunger Games. Those movies helped fuel book sales and vice versa, and Netflix bought itself a fine opportunity to create a film series for its global subscription base.
Here’s the logline: Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember. When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares…but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed herself right in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed. The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist’s magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him… or her. Kingfisher’s past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he’s the only way Saeris is going to make it home.
Cantillon was exec producer of the Fede Alvarez-directed hit reboot Alien Romulus. She was principal of Bisous Pictures, a romance label under MRC since 2020 and exec produced Jane Austen’s Persuasion starring Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Davis and Henry Golding for Netflix. Cantillon and Lucky Chap are in post-production of the 8-part series podcast, Madam Ram, for QCODE Media, which chronicles the life of the controversial, infamous owner of the LA and St. Louis Rams, Georgia Frontiere. Pic stars Toni Collette and will be released next year. At TriStar Pictures, she is currently developing an adaptation of Kristin Hannah’s bestseller, The Nightingale, with Hello Sunshine.
Hart is repped by WME, Cantillon by UTA.