“Logo text As the year starts to wind down and Hollywood begins its turkey trot out of town, Sony Pictures has made one of the biggest book acquisitions of 2025, landing film adaptation rights to James Islington’s Hierarchy series. The move comes as the book series’ second installment, The Strength of the Few, debuts at No. 1”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
As the year starts to wind down and Hollywood begins its turkey trot out of town, Sony Pictures has made one of the biggest book acquisitions of 2025, landing film adaptation rights to James Islington’s Hierarchy series.
The move comes as the book series’ second installment, The Strength of the Fewdebuts at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list following its Nov. 11 US release from Simon & Schuster division Saga Press. And thanks to TikTok and YouTube, Strength of the Few also debuted at No. 1 in its first week in Canada and the top best-seller lists in the UK and Australia.
No producer or filmmaker is currently attached.
Set in a Roman Empire-style civilization but infused with magic, the Hierarchy series follows Vis, a young man hiding a life-threatening secret, as he’s forced to investigate a death while also infiltrating the all-powerful regime that feeds on the mental and physical energy, dubbed the Will, of the masses. Vis uncovers conspiracies that pull him into a rebellion that could upend the world order. What began as a mission of survival becomes a sweeping fight against a world built on exploitation, where loyalty, power and truth are all weaponized.
The Australia-based Islington worked in the tech industry when he began writing what would become The Licanius Trilogy, the books that established him as a serious fantasy author with a devoted fanbase. He self-published the first book, The Shadow of What Was Lostbefore nabbing a book deal for parts two and three.
Hierarchy’s Will of the Many was published in 2023. On Goodreads, the book has clocked in almost 170,000 ratings by readers, including over 120,000 five stars. The book won the 2023 Aurealis Award for best fantasy novel (the awards honor the best in fantasy, sci-fi and horror in Australian literature), was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award – Reader’s Favorite Fantasy in 2023 and selected as one of Audible’s Best of 2023 in fantasy. Islington has now sold more than 2.5 million books, and his work has been translated into seventeen different languages.
Peter Kang and Louie Provost are overseeing the project for the studio.
Islington is repped by Paul Lucas from Regal Hoffmann & Associates.