Frank Beddor is celebrating a major milestone — the 20th anniversary of his best-selling 'The Looking Glass Wars' trilogy — with an ambitious slate of new projects that will finally bring Princess Alyss Heart's story to audiences across multiple platforms, from gaming to stage to screen.
Beddor admitted it took him 20 years to get around to the musical despite Gregory Maguire telling him 'You'll make more money on the musical.' That's a long time to sit on a potentially lucrative property — and now he's racing to catch up with a crowded expansion plan that includes video games, comics, TV, and theater.
The deck-building game 'The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards' launches summer 2026 on Steam with a playable demo at Steam Next Fest in June. Beddor told Variety he's targeting West End for the musical and London production for the TV series, with new announcements expected soon.
Twenty years is a long time to sit on franchise potential — but Beddor's timing might actually be perfect. The gaming industry is ravenous for IP-driven narrative experiences, and Wonderland's darker edge could finally find its audience.
Frank Beddor's 'The Looking Glass Wars' trilogy is getting the full multimedia treatment it's been denied for two decades. The author announced a video game, musical, TV series, comic book, and artbook all in one fell swoop — proving that sometimes you have to wait until the moment is right before making your big move. The flagship project is 'The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards,' a strategic deck-building game launching on Steam this summer.
Developed by veteran designer Richard Leibowitz in collaboration with Beddor's Automatic Publishing and Automatic Pictures, the title promises players a darker take on Wonderland — one where Princess Alyss Heart isn't tumbling down rabbit holes but navigating war-torn territory as an elite operative. The 15-hour campaign features over 140 escalating challenges, and progress persists even after defeat. A playable demo drops during Steam Next Fest in June.
But the game is just the opening move. Beddor revealed he's actively developing both a musical and television series, with plans to mount the stage production on London's West End and produce the TV show out of the U.K. capital as well. The announcements come wrapped around the 20th anniversary of his original trilogy, which reimagined Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' as the suppressed true history of the Heart kingdom.
What makes this expansion particularly juicy is the backstory Beddor shared with Variety: author Gregory Maguire — who wrote 'Wicked,' later adapted into a massively successful Broadway musical — gave Beddor advice years ago. 'He called me afterwards, and he says, "You should start thinking about the musical. You'll make more money on the musical." So it's just taken me 20 years to get around doing all these other things.' Twenty years.
That's not patience — that's either strategic delay or a very slow-burn creative process. The timing of this aggressive franchise push raises questions. Beddor's been sitting on valuable intellectual property since 2006, and only now is he breaking it open across every medium simultaneously?
The Kickstarter campaign for 'The Looking Glass Wars: Visions of Wonderland' — described as a 'museum-quality artbook' — suggests there may be financial motivations driving the accelerated timeline. Whether this multi-platform blitz represents pent-up ambition finally unleashed or a calculated cash-in on nostalgia remains to be seen, but one thing's certain: Beddor is done waiting in the wings.
