The Roku Channel is feeling a bit more magical following the recent release of The Spiderwick Chronicles. On Wednesday, the streaming platform indicated that The Spiderwick Chronicles has become their most-watched on demand title ever, claiming that “millions” have watched the show since its April 19th debut. This record-breaking honor apparently beats out both Roku Originals, which have previously included Weird: The Al Yankovic Story as well as various programming from Quibi, and acquired content.
The Spiderwick Chronicles series, which is produced by Paramount Television Studios & 20th Television, moved to Roku in 2023 after initially being ordered for Disney+. It is the second live-action adaptation of the franchise, after a 2008 film starring Freddie Highmore and Seth Rogen.
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What Is The Spiderwick Chronicles About?
In The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Grace family moves from Brooklyn, New York, to their ancestral home in Henson, Michigan, the Spiderwick Estate. Helen makes the move with her 15-year-old fraternal twin boys, Jared and Simon, and her older daughter, Mallory. Shortly after moving to the Spiderwick Estate Jared discovers a boggart and realizes that magical creatures are real! The only one to believe him is his great-aunt Lucinda who implores Jared to find the pages of her father’s field guide to magical creatures and protect them from the murderous Ogre, Mulgarath.
The cast of The Spiderwick Chronicles includes Joy Bryant, Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, Mychala Lee, Jack Dylan Grazer, Christian Slater, and Alyvia Alyn Lind. The series is showrun by Aron Eli Coleite, with executive producers including Coleite, Kat Coiro, Tony DiTerlizzi, Holly Black, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, D.J. Goldberg, Julie Kane-Ritsch and Grace Gilroy.
What Is The Spiderwick Chronicles Based On?
DiTerlizzi and Black’s book series consisted of five books — The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda’s Secret, the Ironwood Tree, and The Wrath of Mulgarath. It also spawned the spinoff series Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, which included the three novels The Nixie’s Song, A Giant Problem, and The Wyrm King.
“Hol and I had received many letters from kids telling us of their experiences with faeries, and I had been making field guides to dragons and monsters since I was a kid, so we knew there was something magic there,” DiTerlizzi explained in a 2008 interview with FanBolt. “And Holly knows that folklore so well. We thought it would be cool to tell a story of modern day kids thrust into the realm of faeries.”
“When Tony and I first met, one of the things we talked about was faery folklore so this was the perfect project for us to do together,” Black echoed. “We love the idea that kids might take the Field Guide and go out into their back yards or parks and look for evidence of faeries. If they do, they’ll probably find it.”
As mentioned above, Season 1 of The Spiderwick Chronicles is now streaming exclusively on The Roku Channel.
