The bidding war over Laini Taylor’s fantasy novel, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, was fiercely competitive with several major movie studios vying to obtain the rights. At the beginning of this month, we brought you news that Paramount Pictures was leading the pack of studios interested in capitalizing on the next hot YA property.

THR reports that the bidding contest concluded with Universal Studios on top, beating out Paramount’s and other major studios’ bids. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, was published this past September and is the first book of a trilogy. It has topped several “Best Of” lists, including Amazon’s Ten Books of 2011, Amazon’s #1 Teen Book of 2011, Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2011, Huffington Post’s Top 10 YA Book of 2011 and the New York Times’ list of Notable Children’s Books of 2011.

Book Synopsis:

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

When one of the strangers–beautiful, haunted Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

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