EXCLUSIVE: Pretty Little Liars star Sasha Pieterse is launching production label Mother Bare Productions with the first project a movie adaptation of popular American novelist Sherrilyn Kenyon’s upcoming urban fantasy book series Infernal Affairs, which Pieterse will star in and produce.
Kenyon has sold more than 70 million books and is known for her genre work including the Dark Hunter, Chronicles of Nick, Deadman’s Cross, and The League novels. Infernal Affairs is her latest franchise hopeful, with first instalment Hell To Pay released later this month, Hell’s Half Acre due out in June, and a third title coming at a later date.
The story follows the “dangerously seductive” Lucian “Luke” Teivel, Lucifer’s son, who is banished to Earth to work for a secret task force that polices supernatural crime. He fights the threats alongside his guarded new partner, Detective Sorcha O’Malley, in Savannah, Georgia, and along the way “they uncover a conspiracy that could ignite a war between Heaven and Hell, while a forbidden attraction grows between them”. Pieterse will play O’Malley.
Adapting the urban fantasy story for the screen are Cory Todd Hughes and Adrian Speckert, whose scripts have included Under Fire, starring Dylan Sprouse, and Foster, starring Ron Perlman. In the works are Finding Frankie alongside producer Sean Robins (Mortal Kombat), and Chained Together with Anton. Hughes and Speckert’s banner So It Goes Entertainment will produce with Pieterse’s new label.
The team plans to adapt the series as a feature film, with an eye toward building a larger franchise rooted in Kenyon’s mythology.
Pieterse is best known for portraying Alison DiLaurentis in the Freeform series Pretty Little Liars and its spinoff Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. The former Dancing With The Stars contestant also starred in 2024 movie The Image Of You with Parker Young and Mira Sorvino.
The actress said today: “When I first read Hell To Pay, what stopped me wasn’t the mythology or the world-building, though both are extraordinary. It was Sorcha. Here is a woman who has been quietly exiled to the margins of her own career, reassigned to a unit that the rest of law enforcement treats like a punchline, carrying a past she refuses to explain and a talent she’s still learning to trust. And yet she walks into Infernal Affairs on her first day and doesn’t flinch. Not at the colleagues, not at the cases, and certainly not at a six-foot-something prince of Hell who becomes her partner. She holds her ground with wit and composure while her entire understanding of the world is being rewritten around her.”
She continued: “That resilience — quiet, unshowy, earned, is what makes her so compelling to me. And then there’s the slow, almost reluctant way she lets Luke in. Not because she needs him, but because she chooses to trust again, which for a woman like Sorcha is the most radical thing she can do. That’s the story I want to tell with Mother Bare Productions. Stories about women who are already whole, who grow not because they were broken, but because they were brave enough to keep going.”
In a joint statement, Hughes and Speckert commented: “We’re incredibly excited to partner with Sasha and bring Sherrilyn’s new series to life. She’s created an expansive, emotionally rich world, and our goal is to translate that into something cinematic, epic, romantic, and deeply engaging for both longtime fans of Sherrilyn’s and new audiences.”
Kenyon added: “I couldn’t be more excited or honored. I’ve been a huge fan of Sasha’s for years. She’s such a tremendous talent. And I love everything I’ve seen from Cory and Adrian. I think this is the perfect team to breathe cinematic life into Infernal Affairs, and I can’t think of anyone better to play Sorcha than Sasha. This series couldn’t be in better hands, and I know my fans will be thrilled.”
Pieterse is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment, and Yorn, Levine. Hughes and Speckert are represented by IAG, Anvil Entertainment, and Miloknay Weiner. Kenyon is being repped by attorney Maggie Marr.
