Are non-Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Twiligh YA Adaptations doomed?

[JD]

It seems like none of the movies based on YA books outside of these three series are successful. So do you guys think if Divergent (released March 21 in the US) and The Maze Runner (Sept. 14) both bomb they will finally give it up, or are they going to keep trying hoping to find more that people actually want see? I'm thinking at this point it might be time for Hollywood to look for a new source for adaptations.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Narnia got three movies. Granted, it's more children's than young adult (although so was Harry Potter at first), but it shows others are possible.

We had three in the last decade. I think that's too small of a sample size.

 

[Aldo]

Vampire Academy seems to be pretty dead at the box office. The Percy Jackson films on the other hand seem to be putzing along, aren't they on the third one now?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

There's a fourth Narnia movie in development. There were also two Percy Jackson movies.

The problem for a lot of the YA fantasy adaptations is the same problem faced by the fantasy genre in general (with notable exceptions, such as the LOTR, Potter, Twilight, etc): international box office is strong, while domestic box office often underperforms.

Plus too many YA adaptations fail to present a strong enough identity of their own and end up being written off by most moviegoers as generic or as attempts to cash in on other hit series. That's true of a lot of sci-fi and fantasy movies in general. The trick is to make something that's not so esoteric it scares people away, but not so familiar it's dismissed as dull.

Divergent will probably do pretty well, but I don't think they're presenting its hook well enough in the trailers to make it stand out. It's going to be dismissed as an attempt to cash in on The Hunger Games by at least a fair percentage of moviegoers.

The attempts to launch new franchises in the mold of Twilight have done the worst. They've failed at the box office both domestically and abroad. I expect there'll be a drop-off in that type of adaptation, while the studios will continue to attempt to launch new franchises in the mold of Potter and The Hunger Games.

 

[cardinal biggles]

There's so many sides to that equation I'm not even sure where to begin. I'm a reference librarian in a public library and also work part-time at Barnes & Noble, so I'll throw out few random, disorganized (and possibly contradictory) thoughts that consider this from the book side as well as the film side:

1. The successful films you cited (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games) benefited from their status as runaway bestselling books. In the case of the Harry Potter films, you can also argue that the books and films helped feed each other's popularity, as Rowling published the final three novels while the earlier books were seeing theatrical releases.
2. Some of the other novels you cite are bestsellers, but haven't reached the heights of the three big franchises. Inasmuch as a successful novel propels people to the movie theater to see its adaptation, maybe the audience for some of those films hasn't been as large.
3. The films that are tanking — Beautiful Creatures; Percy Jackson; Mortal Instruments: City of Bones — didn't enjoy great crossover appeal when they were books. Parents as well as kids were reading Harry Potter and Twilight and Hunger Games. Even adults without kids, because they heard it was the hot thing to read. Seriously, I had 80-year-old women on the waiting list for Breaking Dawn when it came out.
4. There's something to be said for striking while the iron is hot. Granted, it takes time to adapt the novel and shoot the film, but your success stories did it while the literary property was still hot. Compare that with the long and winding road taken by The Golden Compass, The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, and most recently Ender's Game.
5. Alidar Jarok mentioned the Narnia adaptations. While The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a bona fide blockbuster, Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader suffered from diminishing returns, and it's taken them three years just to announce that they're going to start writing the screenplay for The Silver Chair.
6. Often the films just suck on their own merits, independent of the source material. Again, if you don't have a rampant fanbase (i.e., Twilight fangirls), there's little chance of overcoming those sort of negative reviews and word-of-mouth.
7. There's something to be said for TV — witness the success (on its own smaller, CW-sized scale) of Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries. Not sure either one of those would have done well as films (see #2), but they've done well enough to have multi-season runs on network TV.

I'm not going to try and predict box office numbers, but I will make these predictions:

• Divergent: lukewarm, might actually flop
• Vampire Academy: biiiiiig flop
• Maze Runner: movie could actually be good, but I doubt it will do Hunger Games numbers
• The Fault in Our Stars: probably a big hit

ETA:

The Percy Jackson films on the other hand seem to be putzing along, aren't they on the third one now?

They did two of those, and the first one wasn't gangbusters, so it surprised me when they came out with the second. Maybe it sold well on DVD...

 

[JD]

VA was already a huuuuge flop, at least here in the US. Since I'm a huge Vampire addict, and the books seemed to be pretty good, I was actually planning on trying to see it, but once I saw the reviews I didn't bother.
I do plan on seeing Divergent, and The Maze Runner sounds interesting. I haven't had a chance to read Divergent yet, but I hope to have at least started The Maze Runner before it comes out. It will be interesting to see how much MTV promotes Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien being the lead in TMR.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The level of box office a film needs to be successful varies widely depending on production and distribution costs. While the mega-franchises represent the pinacle of revenue the studios would like to see, lower-profile adaptations can be deemed successful at much lower box office levels if they represent a good return.

The first Percy Jackson made $226.4 million worldwide against a production budget of $95 million. Not a huge hit, not quite the kind of return that will make a sequel a no-brainer, but a return that will quite often lead to a sequel. The second Percy Jackson made $199.8 million worldwide against a production budget of $90 million, a return that puts it once again in the maybe/maybe not boat in terms of another sequel.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It's worth pointing out that I heard of Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games as books before the movies came out. Never heard of Divergent until I saw the trailer and didn't know it was a book until just now.

The only comparable book series that hasn't been made into a movie is A Song of Ice and Fire and that's because it's a tv series.

 

[cardinal biggles]

@ OOMVM re: Percy Jackson -- fair point. I also keep forgetting about the international box-office.

 

[Sindatur]

Regarding Percy Jackson 2, yea, they took a long time to make a decision to greenlight a second one, so, it seems TV Rights and/or DVD Sales edged it into being Greenlighted

I also agree, that HP, Twilight, and Hunger Games had the wider Mass Age Group appeal (And as mentioned, HP Movies and Books running together, likely helped fuel it so well). I also think having JKR on hand for approvals also helped ensure Readers were satisfied for the most part with the Adaptations. If you have a Huge Reader Base, and you piss off the bulk of them with your Adaptation, that's a lot of bad press and bad word of mouth to overcome.

The Fans would likely be Gung-Ho when it was announced, and telling friends "Well, now you can watch it, instead of having to read it" and "Go with me, you always seem interested when I talk about the Books" and so forth, but, as Spoilers are leaked, if something the bulk of the audience got cut and it pisses them off, they'll spread that dissatisfaction. If your readership isn't Huge, that makes it less risky in this area, but, also less fan base word of mouth if you do it right by them. You're probably always going to piss off a certain at least small percentage, that almost can't be helped

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

With the Narnia movies, box office dropped steeply with the second one, both domestically and internationally, going from $745 million to $419 million worldwide. The third movie went up internationally but dropped again domestically, making $415 million worldwide, with 74.9% of that coming from international markets, while international box office accounted for 66.3% of the second movie's box office.

 

[kitik]

It seems like none of the movies based on YA books outside of these three series are successful. So do you guys think if Divergent (released March 21 in the US) and The Maze Runner (Sept. 14) both bomb

Divergent: lukewarm, might actually flop

I'd be pretty surprised if Divergent doesn't hit $100 million. It seems to have the most hype and be the most anticipated of all these adaptations since Hunger Games itself.

 

[intrinsical]

My prediction is Divergent will bomb.

I just read the Divergent series and while I found the first two books to be alright but not terribly interesting, the final book Allegiant was an illogical, inconsistent, poorly written mess. In fact, Allegiant has many one star ratings on Amazon and GoodReads so its likely even fans of the series may not want to watch the movie.