‘Animorphs’: Disney Officially Revives Beloved Sci-Fi Franchise!!

The 1990s were an incredible decade for sci-fi, particularly on television. Star Trek was thriving with quality series like Deep Space 9 and Voyager; groundbreaking new franchises were introduced, like Babylon 5 and Farscape; and animation across the globe was firing on all cylinders with masterpieces like Futurama, Cowboy Bebop, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Among the greatest shows to open viewers’ minds at the time was undoubtedly The X-Files, following agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they investigate the inexplicable and brush with the otherworldly. Ryan Coogler is now hard at work to reboot the Fox classic for Hulu, with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel as his leads, but he’s not done mining the 90s for sci-fi gold worthy of a revisit.

Back in April, news broke that Coogler would be executive producing a new series based on the Animorphs books by K. A. Applegate — the pen name of Katherine Applegate and her husband Michael Grant — for Disney+. His Proximity Media banner is producing, with Bayan Wolcott, who most recently wrote for Hulu‘s The Handmaid’s Tale spin-off, The Testaments, serving as showrunner and writer. If the project gets an official order at the Disney streamer, it would be the second attempt at bringing the young-adult sci-fi horror coming-of-age series to life on-screen, following the two-season Nickelodeon show starring The Rookie‘s Shawn Ashmore that debuted in 1998. Publisher Scholastic is also backing the new production, with Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman serving as individual executive producers.

Coogler and Wolcott‘s Animorphs series appears to be staying faithful to the books if the logline is any indication. It will again center on a group of teenagers who uncover a threat lying just underneath the surface of their world and must band together to stop it while balancing their otherwise typical, chaotic teenage lives in high school. In the books, that threat was the parasitic Yeerk aliens, seeking to conquer humanity by invading their bodies and controlling their minds. The teens learn of the Yeerk from a dying extraterrestrial of the Andalite race, who grants them the ability to transform into any animal they touch, allowing them to work as an underground resistance fighting to end the galactic threat. Applegate‘s series spanned a staggering 54 mainline entries and a bevy of companion novels from 1996 through 2001, telling each story in first-person from one of the characters’ perspectives and exploring some remarkably dark and deep topics for a coming-of-age YA series, from body horror to the terrors of war, dehumanization, imperialism, family, and more. Perhaps their most memorable aspect, however, was David B. Mattingly‘s iconic cover art, depicting the teens slowly morphing into creatures.

Coogler’s ‘X-Files’ Series Is Quickly Taking Shape

While Animorphs is a bit further off, Coogler is quickly bringing together the key pieces of his X-Files reboot. Since becoming attached to the YA series, his other 90s sci-fi show has rounded out its stacked roster of guest stars for its inaugural run, with recent Weapons Oscar winner Amy Madigan headlining the bunch. Joining her are Steve Buscemi, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrand, and Sofia Grace Clifton. Everything about his take on the extraterrestrial classic appears to be maintaining its spirit, which boasted a similarly impressive slate of stars throughout its eleven-season run. Deadwyler couldn’t give much away about what Coogler‘s cooking in an interview with Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff earlier this year, but she assured that he’s taking his time to get it right, adding that “it is cooking slowly and with lots of flavor.”