Tomi Adeyemi, the author of the popular YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone, has distanced herself from the forthcoming film adaptation of her book.

“There is a reason I will not post anything about the adaptation of my work,” the Nigerian-American author said in group chat messages shared to TikTok.

The Paramount adaptation of Adeyemi’s best-selling debut novel is set to premiere on 15 January 2027. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King), the film is slated to star Amandla Stenberg, Thuso Mbedu, Tosin Cole, Damson Idris, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Regina King, Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Viola Davis.

Adeyemi’s post also shares what seem to be messages sent to star Stenberg in February 2025, reading: “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me.”

The messages appear to be from around the time that Stenberg responded to a colorism backlash surrounding her role. Stenberg’s character of Princess Amari is described in the book as having “dark copper skin”; the actor is biracial.

After many fans of the book questioned whether Stenberg was the right choice for the role, the actor responded to the “perception of me that I steal roles from dark-skinned women” in a now-deleted TikTok. Stenberg added that Amari was described as having lighter skin that stands out from the “darker chestnut and mahogany hues” of other characters.

The Guardian has approached Stenberg’s representative for comment.

“I have not seen the film, and I will not watch it,” added Adeyemi, who co-wrote the film with Prince-Bythewood, on TikTok. “It’s been painful holding this back from you all … And I’m sorry if any of you thought I didn’t care about US. More than any glitter.”

Children of Blood and Bone is the first book in Adeyemi’s wildly popular Legacy of Orïsha series. Upon its release in 2018, it debuted at number one on the New York Times’s Young Adult bestsellers list, and saw Adeyemi named to Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.

“I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from,” Adeyemi told the Guardian in an interview around the book’s release. “That was my experience as a child. Children of Blood and Bone is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.”

Replying to a fan in comments beneath her post, Adeyemi said: “I do not mind anyone going to watch the film. I wrote this for us. I fought for us. I’m just laying down my sword and officially separating my name because I can’t keep being hurt and attacked behind the scenes.”

The Guardian has reached out to Paramount and Prince-Bythewood for comment.

Ted Kotcheff, the prolific Canadian director of films including First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, Wake in Fright and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, has died aged 94. His daughter Kate Kotcheff told the Canadian Press that he had died of heart failure on Thursday in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he lived. His son Thomas said: “He died of old age, peacefully, and surrounded by loved ones.”

In an amazingly varied career, Kotcheff’s work ranged from hardhitting TV plays and low-budget features in the UK, to hit Hollywood comedies and prestige-laden award-winners and cult films. Kate Kotcheff said: “He was an amazing storyteller. He was an incredible, larger than life character [and] he was a director who could turn his hand to anything.”

The son of Bulgarian/Macedonian immigrants to Canada, Kotcheff was born in 1931 in Toronto, and raised in the city’s Cabbagetown district. After earning a degree in English literature from Toronto University, Kotcheff joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the early 1950s, part of a remarkable generation that included Norman Jewison, Arthur Hiller, Sidney J Furie and Alvin Rakoff. Like them, he felt he had to move away to further his career, and Kotcheff came to London in 1957 and began making TV plays for strands including Hour of Mystery, Armchair Theatre and ITV Playhouse. These included an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones in 1958, written by Terry Southern and starring Kenneth Spencer and Harry H Corbett, No Trams to Lime Street in 1959, written by Alun Owen, and – infamously – Underground in 1958, in which actor Gareth Jones collapsed and died during a live transmission.

Kotcheff moved into features in the early 60s, making his debut with the 1962 comedy Tiara Tahiti, starring James Mason and John Mills, following it up with Life at the Top, the sequel to hit kitchen sink drama Room at the Top, in 1965, and the race-issue drama Two Gentlemen Sharing in 1969. In the same period Kotcheff also directed the original production of Lionel Bart’s celebrated musical Maggie May, which premiered in 1964. Kotcheff continued to work in TV, directing Ingrid Bergman in an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine in 1967, and achieving perhaps his high point with a contribution to Play for Today in 1971: Edna the Inebriate Woman, starring Patricia Hayes as a homeless alcoholic.

However his career had taken an unexpected detour in the same year with the cult Australian film Wake in Fright, for which he was offered the job to direct despite never having visited the country. Despite being poorly received in its home country due to its uncompromising depiction of a brutally cruel Australian outback, including notorious scenes of a kangaroo hunt, Wake in Fright was selected for the Cannes film festival and went on to become celebrated as a landmark film, both as part of the Australian new wave of the 1970s and as a pioneering entry in the “Ozploitation” subgenre.

In 1974 Kotcheff finally realised his ambition of making a successful Canadian feature film with The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz; starring Richard Dreyfuss, it was adapted from a novel by his friend (and former housemate in London) Mordecai Richler, with whom he had worked on a string of British productions – including an Armchair Theatre adaptation of Duddy Kravitz in 1961. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival and was a major commercial success in Canada.

As a result, Hollywood took notice and Kotcheff was hired to make satirical comedy Fun with Dick and Jane, starring George Segal and Jane Fonda as a successful married couple who turn to crime after Segal is fired. It was a hit on its release in 1977, and Kotcheff followed it up with another Segal comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and Nick Nolte American football film North Dallas Forty.

Kotcheff then released arguably his most influential film: the Sylvester Stallone action film First Blood, which had numerous directors and lead actors attached to it before Kotcheff offered the role to Stallone and production got underway in 1981. A depiction of an emotionally embattled Vietnam veteran, First Blood was a sizeable hit and spawned two sequels, including Rambo: First Blood Part II which became a career-defining success for Stallone in 1985. Kotcheff had another big success at the end of the decade: the dead-body comedy Weekend at Bernie’s, starring Andrew McCarthy.

After the failure of the Tom Selleck comedy Folks! in 1992, Kotcheff returned to TV, and in 2000 joined the long running crime show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as executive producer and occasional director, where he remained for 12 seasons.

Kotcheff was married twice, to Sylvia Kay between 1962 and 1972, and to Laifun Chung, who survives him.

About the author

“Blood and Lightning is a stellar and vivid depiction of an industry that has long been mythologized in popular culture. Kiskaddon’s memoir offers a candid perspective on both the business and creative sides of tattooing. As it dives into a cultural rite of passage, Kiskaddon’s work also excels as a character study.”

—Booklist

“In Blood and Lightning, we don’t just enter the silent and physical spaces within the world of tattooing, instead the spaces are lived, examined, and connected to our humanity. Kiskaddon shows how tattoos, like history and storytelling itself, can evolve depending on the body or the world they occupy.”

—Devin Katayama, Senior Produce for NPR’s Throughline

“Written in an easygoing style, Kiskaddon’s narrative ends up as much a workplace memoir as an anthropological study, where the work being documented is both tattooing and ethnography itself, with frequent references to taking field notes and finding ways to get interviews (paying for a tattoo turns out to be the best way to get a tattoo artist to talk for two hours). It’s a charming and thoughtful slice of life.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Blood and Lightning is an illuminating peek behind the doors of a tattoo shop, digging into the realities, ethics, and philosophy of altering the bodies of strangers.”

—Ashley Holstrom, Foreword Reviews

“Kiskaddon’s sensuous ethnography takes us behind the scenes in the mecca of tattooing—Oakland, California. His richly detailed prose sings as he describes his apprenticeship: learning the right touch, both needle-to-skin and with other members of this ‘cool’ shop. More than any other ethnography I’ve read, this one breathes on the page: we inhale the sharp snap of isopropyl alcohol and the tang of sweat, while early Black Flag pumps out the speakers, thumping over the hum of machines, phone calls, and pain-filled exhalations of the clients. “

—Jennifer C. Lena, author of Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts

“In this book, Kiskaddon covers ground that few researchers have been willing to traverse. Moreover, he is a scholar/tattooist, a combination rarely seen in the serious literature about tattooing.”

—David C. Lane, author of The Other End of the Needle

“Very thoughtful and knowledgeable; pulled me in right from the start.”

—Stephanie Tamez, Tattoo Artist and co-owner ofThis Time Tmrwprivate studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn NYC

“Blood and Lightning is a landmark study of the craft of tattooing that is consistently compelling and rewarding.”

—Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books