Steven Spielberg has acquired the motion picture rights to The 39 Clues, a multi-platform adventure that Scholastic Media is launching this fall with the first book in a ten-volume arc, The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson and the Olympians). The 39 Clues (its title is an obvious allusion to Hitchcock’s classic thriller The 39 Steps) debuts with the publication of Riordan’s novel on September 9th.
The project, which is described as a multi-media adventure, also includes a set of collectible cards and an online game, which will function as the focal point for a mystery, which readers of the novel will be able to solve in order to win a two-year contest with a $10,000 grand prize. These Alternate Reality Game (ARG) features bear some similarity with elements from other ARGs such as Cathy's Book (see "Cathy's Book Sells in at 125k") and Perplex City (see "Perplex City Brand Broadened").
Spielberg is expected to name a writer for the project soon, and according to Variety, he is seriously considering directing the movie version. Dreamworks believe that there is enough material in the series of novels for at least three or four movies, which perhaps explains the reason that the property was optioned by franchise-hungry
