Michael B. Jordan Is Developing a ‘Fourth Wing’ Series for Amazon

Fourth Wing is getting a TV series! Amazon MGM Studios has reportedly purchased the rights to Rebecca Yarros’ The Empyrean book series. Even more interestingly, the series is being produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. The Outlier Society has been Jordan’s way of continuing to support Black and brown stories, producing N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series and Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse.

Fourth Wing is written by a white woman, but the book features a Black male lead—a lead that Yarros has fought for against a whitewashing fandom. Yarros and Liz Pelletier, founder of Fourth Wing’s publishing house, Entangled Publishing, are also reportedly serving as executive producers on the series.

When will the Fourth Wing series be released?

With the SAG-AFTRA strike still ongoing and studios reportedly refusing to return to the negotiation table, we likely won’t see the series until 2025.

What’s interesting about this is that the series only has one book out at this time, with the sequel set for release on November 7, 2023. This is far from the first time a popular but incomplete book series has been given an adaptation, the most notable being Harry Potter and the most infamous being Game of Thrones. While Yarros has time to write more in the series, there could be complications if the TV series catches up to or supasses the published books, much like the issues Game of Thrones faced in its later seasons.

What is Fourth Wing about?

The plot synopsis of Fourth Wing is as follows:

“Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.”

The book is a fantasy romance novel and features a diverse cast of characters, as well as dragons and other fun fantastical elements. It is not traditional young adult literature, instead describing itself as being for New Adults, a burgeoning genre that skews a little older than traditional YA, allowing authors to cover slightly more adult topics.

(featured image: Entangled: Red Tower Books)