Famous Five, relaunch and Blyton spin-off titles

I've already blogged about The Famous Five - how they are being made into a Disney cartoon and more recently about a show starring the grown-up Famous Five. Chorion who own the rights have even bigger plans, both tv and book-wise. Taken from an article in The Bookseller Daily at Frankfurt:

The Famous Five titles will be reborn as a 26-part series, and a mass of novelisations and tie-ins are planned. Chorion has also recruited the creative packager Working Partners to extend the Wishing Chair series of books, and is working with authors on a spin-off series based on The Faraway Tree’s Sylkie the fairy, and classic boarding school series St Clare’s. “Our objective is to make Blyton frontlist again,” says Norton’s deputy, Esra Cafer.

The company is also taking the proven St Clare’s formula to a new realm, with Mermaids of Glimmer Reef—a boarding school series set under the sea and inspired by a mermaid character in another of Blyton’s 8,000 stories. “We’ve looked deep within the Blyton portfolio and this is a true spin-off. It’s a completely new world, but using one of Blyton’s creations,” says Norton.

He argues these ambitious launches satisfy a need for “wholesome” books, as an alternative to the series that deal with adult themes. “There is a lot of age compression in the market,” says Norton. “A lot of the [Blyton] projects really are the best of both worlds. They are safe and value-driven, and they have a modern voice . . . I believe we can put an additional one million books a year into the hands of both fans and new readers.”