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Streaming TV’s Romantasy Problem

Hollywood keeps trying to mine the red-hot genre for adaptations with built-in female fandoms. So why haven’t Amazon or Netflix cracked the code?

shadow and bone
Despite the book genre’s popularity, no one has quite nailed the romantasy formula onscreen. Arguably, Netflix’s adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s romantasy-adjacent Shadow and Bone—which was envisioned as a young-adult franchise play but was abruptly canceled after two seasons—might have come closest. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
Julia Alexander
May 19, 2026

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If you’ve spent any time in “BookTok”—the bibliophilic TikTok subculture with millions of tagged posts—you’re likely already familiar with Fourth Wing. Rebecca Yarros’s dragon-riding wartime adventure novel is one of the defining texts of the romantasy genre, a portmanteau repackaged with a sexier marketing thesis that’s suddenly attracting plenty of interest from Hollywood.