EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has won film rights to Kiera Cass’ global bestseller The Selection, the first of a five-novel series, and has set Black List scribe Katie Lovejoy to adapt it. DiNovi Pictures’ Denise DiNovi and Alison Greenspan are producing with Pouya Shahbazian. Lovejoy’s script The Arsonist Love Story made the 2010 Black List.

The book has sold 3.5 million copies worldwide, and two other volumes have been published. HarperTeen just made a two-book deal to continue the series, which is published in 32 languages. Described as The Hunger Games without the bloodshed, it follows 35 underprivileged girls who are chosen to compete to live in a life of luxury. The protagonist, America Singer, is sweet on a young man from her district, but when she’s exposed to the opulence of a royal life, she’s conflicted, even though a rebel uprising threatens the pampered.

As for Lovejoy, she recently developed a pilot for NBC, with Universal Television, Eva Longoria, and John Glenn producing. She previously wrote pilots for NBC, Bravo, and ABC and worked on the staff of the NBC series Dracula. She is repped by CAA and Myman Greenspan. Cass is repped by Red Tree Literary and New Leaf Literary & Media. Andy Fischel and Julia Spiro are overseeing for Warner Bros.

The Selection has been a hot title in television, with the CW trying hard to launch a Selection series, ordering two consecutive pilots, starring Aimee Teegarden and Yael Grobglas, respectively, in 2012 and 2013. They were produced by Warner Bros. sibling Warner Bros. TV, with Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain as writers.