20th Century Fox Snaps Up ‘Spy School’; Author Stuart Gibbs To Adapt First Title In Book Series

EXCLUSIVE: 20th Century Fox has optioned the New York Times‘ best-selling series Spy School by Stuart Gibbs and set the author attached to write the screenplay based on the first title in the series.

“Fox bought my first two scripts and gave me my first overall deal when I was starting out as a writer,” Gibbs said. “They have always shown such a strong commitment to adapting great books into great family movies. So I am very excited to be working with them again, and I think this is the perfect studio to adapt Spy School.”

With more than a million copies sold and translated into a dozen languages, Spy School follows middle schooler Ben Ripley, who dreams of becoming a CIA agent. Even though he is awkward and accident prone, he is brilliant and recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science that actually is a front for a junior CIA academy. Ben finds out that he was admitted due to a case of mistaken identity, but he doesn’t let this stop him from trying to morph into an undercover agent. Through a series of zany misadventures, Ben realizes he actually might make a halfway decent spy — if he can survive all the attempts being made on his life.

Kira Goldberg is overseeing the project for 20th Century Fox. Gibbs has also written the bestselling books FunJungle and Moon Base Alpha series. He has written the screenplays for movies like See Spot Run and Repli-Kate, as well as worked on a number of animated films and developed shows for Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC, and Fox. He is currently on tour supporting the latest 6th book in Spy School series, Spy School Goes South. Gibbs is represented by ICM Partners, who also negotiated this deal, Authentic Talent & Literary Management and McKuin Frankel Whitehead LLP.