Prime Video officially ordered Fourth Wing to series Monday, ending nearly three years of development turbulence for Rebecca Yarros’ dragon-rider romantasy — and stacking the production with one of the most credentialed creative teams Amazon has ever assembled for a single project.
Michael B. Jordan, fresh off an Academy Award win for Sinners, made the announcement onstage at Amazon’s upfront presentation in New York, then brought out fellow executive producer Lisa Joy, showrunner Meredith Averill, and Yarros herself. Joy, the co-creator of HBO’s Westworld, will direct the pilot. At the event, she told the audience, “We’re building a cinematic world,” with the goal “to deliver the series this fandom deserves.”
Fourth Wing — the first installment in Yarros’ planned five-book Empyrean series — was published in April 2023 and quickly amassed a rabid following largely through BookTok, the reading-focused corner of TikTok. The first three novels in the series have sold more than 12 million editions in the United States alone. The debut book stayed atop the New York Times bestseller list for 18 weeks.
The road to this series order was rocky. Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights around the time of the first novel’s release and began development in October 2023 with Moira Walley-Beckett as the original showrunner. She left the project in July 2025. WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was among the candidates to replace her before Meredith Averill — whose credits span The Haunting of Hill House, Locke & Key, and Wednesday — took over as showrunner in September 2025.
Averill described the source material’s appeal plainly: “Rebecca’s books have become one of the fastest-selling franchises of the 21st century, with a fandom so passionate, so devoted, they don’t just read these books, they live in them.”
The series centers on 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail, whose plans for a quiet life collapse when her mother, a military general, orders her into the brutal Basgiath War College, where hundreds of candidates compete to become dragon riders — with death as the alternative to graduation.
The show will stream exclusively on Prime Video across more than 240 countries and territories. No cast or premiere date has been announced. The plan is for each season to follow a separate book in the series, meaning a potential second season would adapt Iron Flame.
