Spoiler alerts incoming for a 30-year-old book series, but Animorphs was a core part of my childhood. Immediately hooked by cover visuals of kids turning into animals, I eventually had a bookcase filled with the entire series by my early teens: 54 regular series books (each from the perspective of one of the characters), 4 Megamorphs books (which had chapters from each character’s perspective), 4 Chronicles books (spin-offs outside of the main series continuity that added to the lore), and 2 Alteranimorphs books (non-canon Choose Your Own Adventure style). And looking back, I wonder how I was ever allowed to read them.
My parents probably just saw the fun transformation covers; what they didn’t see were the pages filled by teenagers battling a covert alien invasion by “morphing” into animals, complete with themes of body horror, cult indoctrination, the brutality of war, suicide, genocide… and I could go on. Amongst the pre-teen prose, jokes, and 90’s pop-culture references were deep character studies in what a guerilla war could do to young minds. Were the readers part of that study?
So given these books were a huge part of my adolescent years, I AM excited by the announcement of a TV show in development; but also VERY nervous, for a couple of reasons. Firstly: who is this show for? In a preteen book series, you can get away with passages about limbs being ripped off, or characters being disemboweled. You can’t really do that in a TV series aimed at the same age group. Secondly: can they get the audience they need to offset the cost? It’s important to note this has been attempted once before, as an ill-fated Nickelodeon adaptation lasted two seasons but was never really a success: the CGI to produce the animals, transformations, and extremely non-humanoid aliens was either prohibitively expensive or didn’t exist - and the former problem is a very real concern today as well. Will they be able to show what they need to show without it costing an extreme amount (or if it does, generate a large enough audience) to prevent it getting cancelled before it even gets going?