New York Times bestselling author Elle Kennedy has confirmed to HELLO! that her Off Campus series is currently in development for the screen. Off Campus began with the 2015 book The Deal, which in recent years has become a TikTok sensation thanks to the explosion of interest in hockey romance books. "I am allowed to give you a little scoop about [this], there is something in development at the moment for Off Campus.... I'm excited!" Elle told HELLO!
"I think there's always lots of things behind the scenes happening and that's the case for most authors; you have to sit on things and not say anything," she added. "Then everyone asks, "Do you want to make it into a movie? Do you want to make it into a TV show?" And of course I do. But it's a matter of finding someone who wants to make it as well."
The Deal is a spicy romance that follows Briar University student Hannah Wells who, although she may be confident in every other area of her life, is "carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction". But when she asks her college's cocky hockey captain Garrett Graham to help her land a date with her crush she is forced to accept his deal to tutor him in exchange for his help – and neither of them is prepared for what happens next.
The Deal led to three sequels – The Mistake, The Score, The Goal – all of which followed various members of Garrett's team, and The Legacy, which featured four short novellas focusing on each of the main characters from the first books.
Details of which company picked up the series are closely guarded, but our bets are on this becoming a TV show as the series itself is in development, and with a rich carousel of characters to pull from, there is scope for a sexy ensemble series if handled correctly.
Elle has now released The Graham Effect, her first next-generation book that follows Hannah and Garrett's daughter Gigi as she attends their alma mater, Briar University. But the decision to launch a new series based on the children of her characters, was never in the original plan.
"Next generation books are hit or miss for me; most of the time I'm disappointed – the characters aren't doing what my imagination created after the other books ended," Elle tells HELLO!
"But I made a mistake in writing a novella anthology with other authors and there was a little cute story about Garrett and Hannah (from The Deal) – they get trapped in the snow – and I had hundreds of emails from readers saying, ''I need to see a novella for every single book in the off-campus series.' So I wrote The Legacy, and made the mistake of giving Garrett and Hannah twins and suddenly I'm getting hundreds of emails: 'Oh, I want to see what Garrett and Hannah's twins would be like.'
"I really was not planning on writing a book for them. I don't typically do fan service but I was walking my dogs and I was like, 'What would their twins look like?'"