ABOVE: Producer Don Carmody talks about plans to turn The Mortal Instruments into a limited TV series.
TORONTO — Producer Don Carmody said this week plans are in place to bring popular young adult fantasy series The Mortal Instruments to the small screen.
At the Canadian Screen Awards on Sunday night, Global News asked Carmody if he was disappointed by the box office reception for the 2013 film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
The movie, which was shot in Ontario, actually grossed only $91 million worldwide despite an aggressive marketing push. In the U.S. and Canada, it opened in third place with only $9.3 million and dropped a whopping 35 per cent in its second week to No. 7 at the box office.
City of Bones, starring Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, was adapted from the 2007 novel of the same name by Cassandra Clare.
READ MORE: The Mortal Instruments sequel postponed as first film flops
A sequel, The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes, was due to start filming in Toronto in September 2013 but production was scrapped.
Carmody said there is hope for fans anxious to see Clare’s novels come to life again.
“The story is so broad and the novels are so dense that we’re actually now talking about doing it as a limited series for television,” he explained.
“The first book would be the first year and then assuming that goes well, the second book, the third book, the fourth… there are six books. So that’s what we’re looking at.”
READ MORE: What the critics said about The Mortal Instruments
Carmody said a showrunner has been hired and a pilot episode is ready. Like the film, the TV series — which Clare has said will be called Shadowhunters — could be shot in Toronto.
“We’re hoping it will get going,” he said, “and we’re also hoping that we can do it here.”
Carmody, 63, has produced dozens of films in Canada, including the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and Chicago.
At last year’s Canadian Screen Awards, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones received the Golden Screen Award for Feature Film, which recognizes the Canadian film with the year’s highest domestic box office.
This year, Carmody accepted the same award for the made-in-Toronto historical drama Pompeii, which made only $117.8 million worldwide.
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