Cashing in on young adult book market

Published Jun 26, 2015

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JK Rowling changed the game when her books found such success on the big screen. Then, egged on by the success of of the Twilight series, movie production houses went on a shopping spree of YA (young adult) books to bring to the big screen.

Not every book they pick up, makes it, though. Think Erragon, Inkheart, I am Four, Beautiful Creatures or Vampire Academy. Scratch that, don’t think of the last one, it will just make you head explode.

Filming has already started on Allegiant Part 1, but the decision to turn Veronica Roth’s last book about Tris Prior and her struggles in a dystopian society into two films was influenced more by the success of Harry Potter 7.1 et deux than whether it would serve the story’s narrative purpose.

Insurgent, part 2 in the series, has just been released on DVD and Divergent: Allegiant Part 1 is slated for a March 18 release but we have to wonder how closely the films are going to follow the source material.

Both the Divergent series and Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games trilogy end on a down note, and though we don’t expect every film to have a happy ending, Roth has publically stated that she won’t be upset if the film-makers change her ending.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (November 20), though, is more anticipated, judging by the success of Part 1. The trailer suggests that Katniss Everdeen finally commits to the cause of actively opposing President Snow, but as the book suggests, expect lots of people to die.

The trailer for The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (September 25) also suggests that the film company used a much bigger budget for this sequel, after the surprise success of the first film. Now that the kids are out of the Glade, they have to figure out just what is going on in the bigger world. There is a third book in the series, but it is a prequel.

Speaking of trailers, the one for Z for Zachariah (April 8) diverges quite radically from its source material in that it now has a love triangle when the original book only had two characters in it. Margo Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine star, so the film also now aims much older than the book originally did with its 16-year-old protaganist.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair (2016) will see Eustace Scrubb, Jill Pole and Puddleglum journey to the land north of Narnia to rescue King Caspian’s stolen son, Rilian, while ABC Family is developing Mortal Instruments into a tv series (after the somewhat misguided attempt at a film with 2013’s Mortal Instruments: City of Bone).

Looking forward to ones you might not have heard of: Chloe Grace Moretz will star in The 5th Wave (January 29). Susannah Grant (Erin Brokovitch) will adapt a screenplay from Rick Yancey’s alien invasion novel, with J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed) directing.

Tim Burton tackles Ransom Rigg’s story, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (22 April) with Eva Green taking the titular role.

Lauren Kate’s popular Fallen is in post-production, with Addison Timlin playing the young girl who finds herself at a reform school because she was blamed for the death of a young boy. Also somewhere on the horizon might be James Patterson’s Maximum Ride – the story about the teenagers with the 20 percent avian DNA who escaped from their laboratory birthplace.

Not all YA book-to-film adaptations are fantasy-based though – case in point would be the very successful The Fault to our Stars (2014), the success of which has prompted the same team to do Paper Towns (August 21). Also adapted from a John Green novel, this coming-of-age story centres on a teenager and his enigmatic neighbour who loved mysteries so much she became one.

For the younger set, there’s Goosebumps (October 30), which sees a child team up with the niece of a young adult horror author after the writer’s imaginary demons are set free on the town of Greendale, Maryland. Goosebumps writer RL Stein is the one credited with introducing the concept of PG horror in books, so let’s see what they do on film.

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