Surfside Girls: Apple TV+ Orders Series Adaptation of Top Shelf Comic

A fan-favorite young adult comic is officially headed into live-action. On Friday, it was announced that Apple TV+ has given a ten-episode series order to Surfside Girls, based on Kim Dwinell’s graphic novel series released by IDW Publishing’s Top Shelf Productions. The series will star YaYa Gosselin (FBI: Most Wanted, We Can Be Heroes) and Miya Cech (Rim of the World, The Astronauts), and will be written, executive produced, and showran by May Chan (Avatar: The Last Airbender, An American Girl Story: Ivy and Julie 1976).

Surfside Girls is an adventure series about two best friends, Jade (Cech) and Sam (Gosselin), who are psyched to spend their summer riding the waves and catching the rays. That is until they meet a ghost. The girls dive head first into a mystery about a pirate ship and the cursed treasure that allegedly lies beneath Surfside’s beloved Danger Point bluff. After meeting a pirate ghost named Remi, Sam wants to help him break the curse while Jade is determined to find a scientific explanation for the existence of ghosts. To solve the mystery, Sam and Jade will need to combine their very different approaches of logic and imagination. Because together, they are determined to connect the clues, solve the mystery and save Surfside… and maybe they’ll help a couple of pirate ghosts along the way.

Paul Stupin (Switched at Birth, Dawson’s Creek) and Lydia Antonini (Locke & Key, Halo Forward Unto Dawn, October Faction) will serve as executive producers on the series. Alex Diaz and Julie Sagalowsky Diaz (The Shannara Chronicles, What’s Up Warthogs!) serve as writers and executive producers. America Young (Roswell, New Mexico, Legacies) will direct and executive produce the first two episodes. Paul Davidson and Jeff Brustrom will serve as executive producers on behalf of IDW.

The Surfside Girls books series has spawned three books so far: The Secret of Danger Point, The Mystery at the Old Rancho, and The Science of Surfing.

“My elevator pitch is ‘Nancy Drew at the beach,’” Dwinell told Smash Pages back in 2017. “I love action-adventure-mystery stories, and Surfside Girls is all of that, with strong young girl characters, set in a sleepy beach-town setting. My inspirations, besides Nancy Drew, are Scooby-Doo, Flipper, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I stuffed as much Southern California sunshine and culture into it as I could.”

What do you think of Surfside Girls being adapted for television? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!