Momona Tamada (The Baby-Sitters Club) and Alyvia Alyn Lind (Coat Of Many Colors) have joined “The Spiderwick Chronicles” Disney+ series in heavily recurring roles. Disney+ announced the series adaptation of the popular fantasy-adventure books last November.
They join previously announced Lyon Daniels and Noah Cottrell who have been cast in lead roles, Joy Bryant, Mychala Lee and Christian Slater, who will play the villain Mulgarath in the upcoming series.
Few details have been announced, but Disney is calling the series a “modern coming-of-age story combined with fantasy adventure.”
The books tell the tales of the Grace children as they move into their dilapidated ancestral home and begin to unravel a dark mystery about their great-great Uncle who once discovered the secret and maybe foreboding faerie world existing parallel to their own.
In the series, Upon leaving New York and moving to Michigan and into their run-down ancestral home—The Spiderwick Estate—with their mother (Bryant), twin brothers Jared (Daniels) and Simon Grace (Cottrell), along with their sister Mallory (Lee), find themselves pulled into an alternate, fantastical world.
According to Deadline:
Tamada will play Emiko. A local teenager in Henson, she’s a member of the out-patient group therapy at the Meskwaki Psychiatric Hospital. Diagnosed as a pathological liar it’s hard to know when she is telling the truth, but it’s clear that as a townie she has also grown-up hearing about the mysterious goings-on at the Spiderwick Estate and is curious about its newest resident, Jared Grace (Daniels).
Lind will portray Calliope. On the outside she is a perfectly normal girl, but that is only her exterior. She is in fact a Fetch (a portent of death) who has taken this disguise to be able to stay close to the evil ogre, Mulgarath (Slater), and assist in his quest to find Spiderwick’s Field Guide.
The books were written by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The series includes The Field Guide, which was first published in 2003, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda’s Secret, The Ironwood Tree and The Wrath of Mulgarath. They were followed by a second series of books including The Nixie’s Song, A Giant Problem and The Wyrm King.
Kat Coiro (Marry Me, She-Hulk) will direct the first two episodes and will also executive produce.
The series will be produced by Paramount Television Studios and 20th Television. Aron Eli Coleite (Locke & Key) is showrunner and exec produces with Holly Black, Tony DiTerlizzi, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, D.J. Goldberg, and Julie Kane-Ritsch.
Filming is currently underway in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and is scheduled to wrap sometime towards the end of January 2023.
Tamada is best known for playing Claudia Kishi in Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club. Other credits include Paramount’s Secret Headquarters, Netflix’s To All The Boys franchise, and The Main Event.
Lind is best known for her role portraying Dolly Parton on NBC’s Coat Of Many Colors, and in the follow-up Christmas of Many Colors: Circle Of Love. Other credits include the upcoming USA/Syfy series Chucky and Daybreak on Netflix.
Source: Deadline