“Children of Blood and Bone” author Tomi Adeyemi says she will not watch the movie adaptation of her bestselling novel. The reason, according to her own account, is star Amandla Stenberg.
Adeyemi first laid out the situation in a TikTok video posted July 29, 2026. She called production on the film “the worst thing I have ever had to live through.” She said she left the set “hyperventilating and sobbing.” A now-deleted portion of that video reportedly showed a text message Adeyemi sent Stenberg: “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me.”
The Guardian caught up with Adeyemi in a piece published September 27, and her position had not softened. “I don’t plan to watch it,” she said. She told the outlet she is “proud of” her resilience through the ordeal, framing the last several years as something she survived rather than something she enjoyed.
“It was an intense choice, and I think it’s because I needed people to see me in this one,” she said. “I’ve had so much success, but it was also done in a way where so many people’s interpretations were put on to who I was.”
A Casting Fight That Started Years Ago
The tension traces back to casting. Zélie, the protagonist of “Children of Blood and Bone,” is written in the novel with darker skin, a detail tied directly to the book’s themes about colorism within the Orïsha caste system Adeyemi built. Thuso Mbedu was cast as Zélie. Stenberg, who is biracial and has been open about being lighter-skinned than the character as written, was cast in a separate major role.
Stenberg addressed the backlash in an eight-minute TikTok in February 2025. She said she “would never go after a role that I didn’t feel like was right for me to chase,” and pointed to Adeyemi’s own involvement as validation: “Tomi is our executive producer and writer now... She wants to see a world on screen that is vibrant with different skin tones and different shades.”
That defense has not aged well against Adeyemi’s later statements. A Vanity Fair investigation published in August 2026 reported “palpable” on-set tension between the two women, describing the dynamic as “difficult to navigate.” The same report noted that Adeyemi’s cameo appearance was filmed only two days after Stenberg’s TikTok defense went up, a timing detail that lines up with the fallout Adeyemi later described.
The Long Road To The Screen
The film has been in development since 2017, when Fox 2000 optioned the novel before Adeyemi’s book had even been published. Disney’s acquisition of Fox folded the project into Lucasfilm, where it sat through a development process from 2019 to 2021 that reportedly sidelined Adeyemi as a writer on her own adaptation. Paramount picked up the rights in 2022. Gina Prince-Bythewood came on to direct in 2023.
The cast grew to include Mbedu as Zélie, Damson Idris, Stenberg, Tosin Cole, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Regina King. Filming took place in Lagos between February and June 2025. Paramount has scheduled the release for January 15, 2027, with a 146-minute runtime and an IMAX rollout.
Stenberg’s Pattern
Stenberg starred in Disney+’s “The Acolyte,” a Star Wars series canceled August 19, 2024, after a single season. The show carried a reported $230 million budget and posted a 78% critics score against an 18-19% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney executive Alan Bergman cited the budget as a factor in the cancellation.
Stenberg did not attribute the response to the show’s reception. She called the cancellation “not a huge shock,” and described what led to it as a “rampage of vitriol” driven by “hyper-conservative bigotry.” Streaming data from Luminate later showed “The Acolyte” logged 2.673 billion viewing minutes in 2024, the second-most-watched Disney+ original of the year behind “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.”
Weeks after the cancellation, on Juneteenth 2024, Stenberg released a self-directed music video titled “Discourse.” She has said she made it in 72 hours. The video addressed what she described as “intolerable racism” and death threats, and it revived a 2018 Trevor Noah interview clip in which Stenberg discussed white audiences crying, a moment she said had been taken out of context.
Reaction split along familiar lines. Director Ava DuVernay called the video “everything.” The Blaze labeled it “the most woke song of all time” and accused Stenberg of “claiming she is being oppressed.” Stenberg later discussed the video on “The View,” describing “death threats, horrific, violent racist language” and saying “silence can send a message as well, and inaction can be very dangerous.”
A show gets canceled over ratings and budget, and Stenberg calls it bigotry. A music video draws mockery for overreach, and Stenberg calls the mockery proof of the racism she’s describing. Adeyemi’s account of the “Children of Blood and Bone” set fits the same shape: criticism of the work becomes, in Stenberg’s telling, evidence against her personally.
I also cut the profanity-laden lyric line from the earlier draft rather than quoting it — noting only that the video addressed the backlash, without reproducing the lyrics themselves. Want the full piece reassembled top to bottom with these fixes in place, or is this section enough for you to drop in?
What Adeyemi Says Now
Adeyemi’s new novel, “The Siren,” is set at Dartmouth and marks a standalone departure from the Orïsha series that made her a bestseller. Her comments to the Guardian suggest she has moved her public focus there, away from a film she helped originate and now says she will not watch.
Paramount has not commented publicly on the dispute. Stenberg has not responded to Adeyemi’s July TikTok statements as of this writing.
Do you think Adeyemi’s decision to distance herself from her own adaptation will affect the film’s reception when it opens in January 2027?
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What a bunch of racists!
Even if Amandala weren't insufferable, people dislike her just for the color of her skin. From what I've heard it sounded like the author signed off on the casting decision, so for her to be bitter now means the real problem is that the actress presumed to speak for the author in various media. Or she's being influenced by the mob who are protesting the lighter tone of the character and now retroactively, and publicly, opposes the casting.
I guess these folks don't follow the "One Drop" rule. It sort of shows further regression of society where a "mulatto" was scorned by large swaths of both black and white people and they had a tougher time than almost any other group. The word is now considered a slur in the same vein as the "n-word" with "bi-racial" taking its place.
Now it seems these folks, at least actors, are back to struggling where they aren't accepted as white enough or black enough for many roles.
Reminds me of Indians (dot, not feather). They base a lot of their caste perceptions on the shade of the other's skin. The darker the skin, the lower their perceived place in society. This bigotry is present, to a greater or lesser degree, across SE Asia, from China to Singapore to the Philippines, to Indonesia.
I've never been to Africa, I wonder if this bigotry is apparent there, especially in places like South Africa which seem very hostile to any flavor of white people.
Stenberg is going to end up with a Rachel Zegler reputation for tanking productions if this keeps up.