Sony Pictures Adapts Liv Zander's Heartstring Duet — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Sony Pictures acquired feature adaptation rights to The Heartstring Duet, Liv Zander's bestselling dark fantasy romance series, naming it the studio's next literary property for film.
- The Heartstring Duet consists of Crown Me Dead and Crown Me Yours, which blend dark fantasy, horror and romance and went viral after being self-published one week apart in April.
- Crown Me Dead climbed to No. 5 among all eBooks on Amazon, and the two books together amassed more than 100 million Kindle page reads worldwide in just three and a half months.
- Requited, an imprint of Hachette, locked down U.S. rights following the success of the self-release, while HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, secured the UK.
- Liv Zander's books have been translated into 14 languages, with print editions re-released in the U.S. and UK this week; the author is also a USA Today and Amazon bestseller.
- Hollow, the Lindsey Anderson Beer adaptation starring Sydney Sweeney, joins Eruption, The Surrogate Mother, Fake Skating, Home Economics and City on Fire on Sony's recent literary slate.
- Untitled, along with Maggie Marr Legal and Park, Fine & Brower Literary Management, represents Zander.
Why it matters: Sony is buying a property with demand already proven: 100 million-plus Kindle page reads, a No. 5 Amazon eBook peak and 14 translated languages arrived before any film production. Requited and HQ hold the U.S. and UK rights to those same books, so the publishing and screen sides of the franchise now sit under different roofs.
Ask SkimNews
