ABC to Serialize 'The Mortal Instruments' into Television Series

Fans of Cassandra Clare's bestselling book series, The Mortal Instruments, rejoice! The popular Young Adult (YA) series is slated to hit the small screen as an ABC Family television series.

Dubbed as Shadowhunters, the series will be produced by Constantin Film, the same studio responsible for bringing the 2013 film adaptation titled City of Bones which starred Jamie Campbell Bower and Lily Collins and will be produced by Helix and The Client List's Ed Decter. The highly anticipated series will last 13 episodes and casting is still ongoing. Filming will start in May in Toronto, Canada whereas the official release date of the pilot episode has yet to be announced.

Shadowhunters will be following the story of a young 18-year-old girl named Clary Fray who finds out on her birthday that the world she had grown up to is not what she thinks it is. In fact, all the stories, scary or not, that she knew since childhood was real. To add in to that, she also finds out that she descended from a long line of Shadowhunters, creatures that are half-human, half-angel tasked to protect the world from demons while keeping the order of the world. She is thrown by accident into this hidden world when her mother, Jocelyn, was kidnapped where she meets a handsome Shadowhunter named Jace.

In the 2013 film adaptation, Collins played the role of Clary while Bower portrayed Jace. However, they will not be reprising their roles as it was announced that they will be recasting the characters for the television series as they will be starting over from scratch. An interesting point that author Clare confirmed according to International Business Times is that aside from the canonical romance between Clary and Jace, the LGBT community and the fans of the series will be delighted to know that the series will retain the romance between the bisexual warlock, Magnus Bane, and the shadowhunter Alec Lightwood.

According to Tom Ascheim, ABC Family president, "Shadowhunters is a big, epic saga that will resonate with viewers who come to ABC Family for the Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Twilight franchises. A New York Times best-seller for 122-consecutive weeks, with over 35 million copies in print worldwide, Shadowhunters is the perfect story to share with our audience," Hollywood Reporter quotes.