Status Report

Hi everyone. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Took some time, but I managed to recover all of the posts of this blog from a little over a decade ago (Our last post was in 2014). We had switched webhosts, but the blog database had gotten left behind in the transfer. It has been resurfaced with the last backup I had. The formatting may be off, but the content is all there for those who are feeling nostalgic and want to go back in time.

For current state, there are no plans to continue updating this site. Luckily, there is an active fan base alive on Reddit, and Scholastic is still producing Animorphs rereleases as audiobooks, e-books, and graphic novels (although these are adaptations and not new stories).

The movie is basically stuck ‘in development’, and Michael & Katherine have creatively parted ways with PictureStart. I’ve gone ahead and broken things down for those who have been out of the loop:

Official Releases

• Audiobooks
• Ebooks
• Graphic Novels

Active Communities

• /r/Animorphs on Reddit

Movie News (as of 2024)

Michael & Katherine left PictureStart’s Animorphs Movie in 2021 (Interview by the Animorphs Anonymous fan podcast), one year after the series was announced for development.

• Watch the interview here: Movie update starts at 31:25
• Read Fan Discussion about the Interview on Reddit
• animorphsmovie.com is still owned by Sony Pictures, however it continues to be a redirect to a generic page.

No further updates have been made. And since Michael & Katherine are no longer involved, we likely won’t hear anything unless PictureStart makes the announcement or updates their Animorphs page.

Cassie Short Story (as of 2024)

A mock interview was planned to be published on Katherine’s website in the summer of 2022, however it was never released (Source: Reddit & Twitter). It’s possible it may come out eventually, but we have no further news to provide there:

That is all the new info I can think of, but if you want to stay connected then there are still pockets of the fanbase out there creating projects and discussing the series.

As far as the state of this site goes, it will remain as an archive, even if updates are rare. The original intent for this site was to have a place where fans could look back on the series, and I think for the most part we’ve accomplished that, even if we couldn’t fill in all the blanks.

Thank you to everyone that has regularly visited, contributed, shared their thoughts and creative projects with us. This website started as a personal passion project, and I ended up connecting with some really cool people on the way that made it so much better as a community. Thank you.

 

Both seasons of the ’90s Animorphs TV Show will be available on Netflix in U.S and Canada starting July 01, 2014. The upcoming release list was posted on Huffington Post yesterday.

No word yet regarding Canada, UK, or releases for any other country. We’ll be sure to keep you updated if that information becomes available.

Thanks to the folks at RAF for letting us know!

Update#1: Photo by Lisa (@lenaorgana) on Twitter!

Update #2: Animorphs is on Netflix Canada now too! Can any of our U.K subscribers confirm release as well?

 

The first season of the Animorphs TV show is now available on Amazon Instant Video! Episodes can be purchased for $1.99 each, to stream and digitally download, and the Instant Video app is available to download on Xbox, Playstation, Wii, Apple, and Kindle stores.

The announcement comes from Scholastic as they release other ’90s favourites, such as Goosebumps and The Magic School Bus. No news yet regarding the release of the second season, but we’ll keep you posted.

 

Thanks to Jenny, an Animorphs adaptation has been pushed for today’s PopWatch column in Entertainment Weekly. Here’s an excerpt:

 

Even though Applegate’s characters all had highly developed senses of humor, the series was also surprisingly dark — at least for the pre-Hunger Games era. Back then, most mass-market middle-grade tales didn’t bother exploring the shades of gray that lie between the poles of good and evil. But as the Animorphs books progressed, the Animorphs themselves grew increasingly jaded and shell-shocked. They did terrible things in the name of their worthy cause, then struggled to live with their decisions; they grew increasingly alienated from their families and non-Animorph friends, who couldn’t possibly understand the harsh realities of war. The book’s battles were reasonably graphic, but not in a way that glorified violence. Even morphing scenes, in which the kids transformed into tigers or dolphins or houseflies, emphasized how grotesque and disturbing it was for the characters to watch each other suddenly sprout claws or tails or a proboscis. (Also, the books taught kids cool words like “proboscis.”)

Animorphs‘ moral universe was also a lot more sophisticated than non-readers might expect. (…)

The full article can be found at popwatch.ew.com

 

Thanks to Noah once again, Sony Pictures has now renewed all those Animorphs movie domains we previously listed in December, 2012. The new expiration date for all of them are June, 2014.

Once again, here are the domains that were renewed:

• animorphsmovie.com
• animorphs-movie.com
• animorphs-movie.net

As you can see, nothing has really changed once you click on them. They just forward onto Sony Pictures as before. No official announcements or press releases have been made regarding an Animorphs movie either, but we’ll definitely take the renewal as a good sign that there is still a possibility, however little it may be at this point.

 

A real interesting piece of news has recently surfaced, thanks to Greg from The Pop Arena. It looks like the Nickelodeon Animorphs show from the ’90s is now re-airing (possibly in High Definition) on Qubo, every Saturday at 9 PM. Here is the video announcing the news:

 

 

K.A Applegate has won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan! A big congrats from all of us here at Hirac Delest! (If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet: Please do. The award is entirely well deserved.)

There have been many publications about this over the last week, but Publisher’s Weekly got a hold of K.A’s reaction approximately two hours after winning:

Normally Katherine Applegate would have been in her house in San Francisco the morning that “the call” came in. But she’d been visiting family in Richmond, Va., with her 13-year-old daughter, and found herself in a hotel room 3000 miles from home when the phone rang. Her daughter had caught a bug and was running a fever, and Applegate’s mind was not on the Newbery committee. “It just never crossed my radar screen,” she said. “They told me it was the medal, and I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ ”

As the news sunk in, Applegate said she told the committee, “ ‘It’s the best thing that happened to me since I gave birth, adopted my daughter, and got married.’ I heard a great deal of laughter on the phone. It was fun.”

…

Then, she recalled, “I just sat tight and watched the webcast. It was so much easier because I already knew what the outcome would be.” As soon as her Newbery was announced, “the phone started ringing immediately and incessantly. My husband texted me and said, ‘OMG you’re trending on Twitter!’ ”

Read the full article on Publishers Weekly:
Katherine Applegate on Winning the 2013 Newbery: ‘Stunned Disbelief’

—

In other news: An amusing article has popped up on The Buzz where a new Mississippi bill has been introduced that forbids human-animal hybrids, such as the Animorphs. The HB 819 is The Protection of the Human Person Act, and would have slapped the Animorphs with a fine should they have ever gone public in our time.

The article explains a bit more in depth regarding the circumstances and intent behind the hybrids, and can be read in full at The Buzz.

Thanks to Jason for forwarding this to us!

 

Noah strikes again! Not only does Sony Pictures own animorphs.net, but they also own the following domains:

• animorphsmovie.com
• animorphs-movie.com
• animorphs-movie.net

Following up from our previous post, there is no doubt at all now that Scholastic had something in the works for over a year. However, it still remains to be seen as to whether or not they intend to go ahead with their plans. Remember that the relaunch is cancelled and that these domains are not recent purchases. In fact, they are over 3 years old, and Scholastic still hasn’t released any official statement to make us think this is a sure thing.

One other important thing to note is that the registration for all these domains are a little different from animorphs.net. These movie domains were purchased months before the relaunch was announced, which again confirms the fact that they were testing the market based on the sales of those books.

Also, these domains all expire on June 19th, 2013. So it’s best to disregard the deadline date from our previous post as well, because we don’t have a year anymore. If the fans want to show support, they have to do it fast!

That’s all for now. We’ll post more info as we hear it.

 

A big thanks to Noah for pointing this out: Sony Pictures currently owns the animorphs.net domain name. However, before you get too excited, you should know that going to that domain simply takes you to a default landing page on their site. As of yet, there is no official announcement regarding an Animorphs movie.

I researched this a bit and it looks like this was not a recent purchase. In fact, Sony bought this domain on December 8th, 2009 — approximately a week before we officially confirmed the Animorphs relaunch here on Hirac Delest. So most likely this was just one of the few possible domain names seized in preparation of the reprints.

As to why it is registered by Sony Pictures and leads to them, instead of Scholastic? The most likely reason is that Sony Pictures owns Columbia TriStar Home Video, which was the company responsible for distributing the old TV Show on VHS. As far as I know, the licensing agreement and distribution rights still stand (Source: Scholastic/Columbia TriStar Press Release, 1998).

But forget about the TV show for a moment, because what we’re all really interested in is the possible production of a movie release, right? So here is what we do know: Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant (co-authors of Animorphs) both replied to a Q&A in early 2008 saying that they had been seriously approached by a producer for an Animorphs movie (Source), but that never seemed to go anywhere past the original pitch.

However, from what I’ve been told, Scholastic still does want to make it happen, and that at one point Scholastic did have plans for a feature length Animorphs movie on the back burner for over a year. Whether or not they still do after the cancellation of the relaunch, I have no idea. But this information has been passed on to me by more than one anonymous source involved with Scholastic.

That all said, this is still not official, and the circumstances haven’t changed: Scholastic still needs to know if there is a market for Animorphs. The relaunch was a way to gauge that, but the low sales and eventual cancellation of the reprints have not been a good sign.

So what can we do to help change this? At the current moment, the animorphs.net domain is registered until December 8th, 2013. If the Animorphs fan base wants to build any kind of campaign to help convince Scholastic, then consider this as the deadline. Until there is something that lets Scholastic know there will a reasonable profit in pursuing a movie or a 2.0 book series, we will not see it happen anytime in the near future.

I think that covers everything for now. As always, we will keep you updated should there be any official progress in the continuation of Animorphs. Also, if anyone comes across anything else that is interesting, then please be sure to forward it to us to have a look. (And if TPTB are reading this up at Scholastic HQ, then get a hold of me too — I want to help make this happen just as much as you do!)

 

Dan Letchworth from Scholastic returns again, this time confirming the conclusions we had drawn up in our previous post:

“Hi again, just to put doubts to rest about what we’ve all already deduced–my editor at Scholastic just confirmed with me this morning that Animorphs #8 was cancelled at a very late stage, with no plans for any further rereleases.

Hellfire and damnation!”

-Dan

Sad to say, this also removes the chances of an Animorphs 2.0 or a movie adaptation any time in the near future. We’d like to thank Dan once again, for keeping us and the fans up-to-date on the official progress of the series.

As a side note: If you were holding out on buying any of the new reprints in paperback, then now might be the best time to get them. They are unlikely to ever get a second printing, making these now ‘limited time editions’ even harder to find than the ones from the original Classic run.

That’s everything for now. As always, we’ll keep you informed should there be any further official announcement to the continuation of the series, and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with those latest Animorphs-related updates. Until next time!