ACOTAR. The acronym all of us citizens of BookTok know and love so dearly. ACOTAR, or A Court of Thorns and Roses, is a five-book fantasy romance (“romantasy”) series by none other than Miss Sarah J. Maas. With over 1.3 million posts under the #ACOTAR hashtag alone, the series is singlehandedly sweeping young women — and now even boyfriends whom we women force to read it for “educational purposes”— off their feet. With thousands of social media users gushing over voice actors seductively reading dialogue, realistic AI art, fan castings for the beloved characters and even fan-made cartoons many hope to see inspire an animated series, potential screen adaptations couldn’t be more relevant.
Yet recently, all talk about the supposed Hulu adaptation has practically dropped. In fact, updates are so non-existent that rumors began to circulate that the series has been scrapped by Hulu. Though Maas shared an Instagram post in March 2021 announcing her adaptation of the book for the screen with the creator of Outlander, Ron Moore, her post has since been deleted. “While there is SO much more news to share with you guys about bringing this series to life, it just feels so great to finally be able to talk about this! Stay tuned for more details!!” she wrote, but hardly any followed.
No information about the proposed timeline for the series production or release date has been shared besides a June 2023 update in which Moore told Collider that he and Maas had developed the show and that he would be supervising rather than directing it. “We have not been given the green light for pickup,” he explained. “But Hulu likes it very much. And hopefully, we’ll keep moving forward.”
In November, another cryptic message from Moore followed: he informed TVLine that, though he and Maas had “written some scripts” and the show was still “in development,” they were “just sort of waiting” on casting news.
Most recently, in February, a slew of rumors spread that ACOTAR was no longer in development at Hulu. Notably, on February 12, 2024, TVLine reported that the adaptation “reached a dead end” at Hulu, citing anonymous sources and that Disney and 20th Television were not looking for other outlets for the series.
However, Entertainment Weekly debunked the rumors that very day: “Sources close to the situation confirmed to EW that the long-delayed project has not been scrapped,” adding that “Variety reported that the news was accurate, but later recanted that confirmation.”
So, the unsatisfying moral of the story: the future of the beloved series remains murky.
In the meantime, we eager fans have gorgeous fanart to satiate us. Nobody will be able to do Rhys justice anyway.