Emma Watson, the erstwhile Hermione Granger, has landed her own fantasy franchise, “Queen of the Tearling.” Like the Harry Potter series, it will be produced for Warner Bros. by David Heyman.
The “Tearling” films, set to make Watson a major star, will attempt to replicate the vast success of Peter Jackson’s J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations and HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” which is based on novelist George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” saga.
Erika Johansen’s “Tearling” trilogy, which begins publication next summer, is “set three centuries after a small portion of the human race has populated a land mass that mysteriously emerged in the wake of an environmental catastrophe,” according to HarperCollins’ press release.
Watson will play an idealistic 19-year-old princess, Kelsea Glynn, “who must reclaim her deceased mother’s throne and redeem her kingdom, the Tearling, from forces of corruption and [the] dark magic of the Red Queen, the sorceress-tyrant of the neighboring country, Mortmesne.”
Announced yesterday in Variety, the news was timed, perhaps, to coincide with the release today of “The Bling Ring.” Although Sofia Coppola’s fable about celebrity envy, the pitfalls of social media, and teenage alienation is an ensemble film, Watson gives its most sophisticated performance as the most egotistical of the Valley girls who burgle the homes (specifically the wardrobes) of such stars as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
Her character, Nicki, is based on Alexis Neiers, who parlayed her notoriety as one of the burglars into a short-lived reality show and spent five days of her month-long prison sentence in a cell next to Lohan’s. Watson occupies the film’s hall of mirrors with convincingly snotty aplomb; it’s a knowing portrayal of a delusional young woman, as good as her work as the jilted wardrobe assistant in “My Week With Marilyn.”
It also continues the cautious sexualization of 23-year-old Watson’s post-Hermione persona — a subject of fascination for the tabloids and trashier websites — begun in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” “The Bling Ring” has Nicki briefly do a pole dance (so bored it’s mocking) in Paris Hilton’s nightclub-themed rec room and also protrude her tongue lasciviously during a disco scene.
An elegant fashion icon and poised talk-show guest, Watson meanwhile plays a cursing, axe-wielding version of herself in the apocalypse comedy “This Is the End.” She is clearly a good sport. Hermione Granger is dead, long live the princess. Hopefully, “Kelsea Glynn” will partake of her wit.