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Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Developing Digital Star Zach King’s ‘My Magical Life’

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment has preemptively optioned the feature film rights to social media personality and filmmaker Zach King’s debut novel proposal “My Magical Life.”

Simultaneous to the film deal, HarperCollins Children’s Books acquired “My Magical Life” in a competitive auction as a three-book series, with the first installment to be published next fall.

King has nearly 16 million follower on Instagram and more than 21 million followers across all social media platforms. He began editing tutorials and making short films in his college dorm room and found success on YouTube, Vine, and Instagram.

Most recently, he was contender on “The Amazing Race” and had a voice role in Disney’s “Zootopia.”

The movie and book series will center on an 11-year-old Zach King who has magical powers, just like everyone else in his family, but has trouble harnessing his abilities. To help him learn to appreciate his natural gifts, Zach’s parents decide to send him out into the scariest of all the real worlds — middle school — where he uses his magical abilities to become the most popular kid in school, only to see everything go wrong from there.

Amblin said the deal is the first for a digital filmmaker at both a traditional publishing house and major film studio. King, who will serve as an executive producer on the movie, will also create an interactive augmented reality app that extends “My Magical Life” into the digital world.

King is represented by CAA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush & Kaller, L.L.P.

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