Disney Branded Television has ramped up on developing new content for Disney+ and Disney Channel. Now, they are in development on a new series, Noggin based on John Corey Whaley’s book of the same name, which was pitched by the original voice of Aladdin himself Scott Weinger.
According to Deadline, The Disney+ series billed as part Fault in Our Stars and part coming-of-age science-fiction will follow Travis Coates, a leukemia survivor and successful participant of a head-onto-somebody-else’s-donor-body transplant. At 16, just before Travis died, he decided to have his head cryogenically frozen in the hope that future medical technology would allow his head to receive a donor body, such that he could live a full and healthy life. What he and his family didn’t account for was that it wouldn’t take very long. Now, Travis has a good head—on someone else’s shoulders.
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Weinger continues his working relationship with The Walt Disney Company, previously writing and producing ABC shows black-ish, Galavant, and The Muppets. Weinger will executive produce Noggin alongside Randall Einhorn (The Mick, Wilfred) and Jeremy Stern of Sad Unicorn. Sad Unicorn had a recent production with ABC Signature Studios and are currently behind ABC’s newly launched Quinta Brunson series Abbott Elementary.
Released in 2014, Noggin was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. The book also made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Best YA Novels of All Time.