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Yen Press to Adapt von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl Novels (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The manga publisher Yen Press has announced on Friday that it will adapt Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl series of high school novels into graphic novel form. The novels center around the drama between Blair, Vanessa, and the other girls of an elite New York City private high school. However, Korean artist Baek Hye-Kyung (Bring it On, Happy Spider, Chiro) will be drawing new stories instead of directly adapting the 13 existing novels. Baek's Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only work will appear Yen Press' monthly manga anthology, Yen Plus, starting in the January 2010 issue.
The original novels have been adapted into a live-action television series that is now in its third season on The CW network. According to Yen Press, Baek is already "a huge fan" of von Ziegesar's novels.
Yen Press and another Korean artist, Narae Lee, have been adapting James Patterson's Maximum Ride novel series since last year. Another Korean artist, Seung-Hui Kye (Recast), is adapting Patterson's Daniel X science fiction novel series. Both of these novel series have been optioned for film adaptations. Yen Press is publishing Takahiro Arai's Japanese manga adaptation of Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak novels and has revealed plans for Korean artist Young Kim's adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels.
Update: More background information added.
Update 2: James Patterson's name corrected. Thanks, Ashen Phoenix.
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