The world of YA adaptation is a fickle one. Sometimes you get a Hunger Games, but sometimes you get a Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. However, regardless of box-office performance, itâs hard to deny much of Hollywoodâs recent YA fare has felt a little⦠lacking in creative diversity. Nearly every adaptation of recent memory takes place in some dystopian or post-apocalyptic future where a bunch of teenagers hold the key to humanityâs salvation. How much do these movie share in common? Enough so that Saturday Night Live felt it was time to take the movie industry to task in a new video sketch titled “The Group Hopper:”
Itâs hard to argue with the evidence presented in this one. The Maze Runner, The Giver, Divergent⦠so many post-apocalyptic stories, yet so few new ways in which theyâre told. Perhaps part of the problem has to do with Hollywoodâs desire to always double down. The Hunger Games being a massive hit made studios think the key to YA success was all about a dystopian future rather than realizing what made The Hunger Games unique was its desire to cast an actress that could, well, act â though we will give props to The Maze Runner for casting the up-and-coming excellence that is Dylan OâBrien (watch some Teen Wolf, people) â as well as work to sell the film on its world rather than its young heartthrobs.
Surely there are other YA books out there worth adapting that donât take place in a dystopian future. Letâs start seeing some of those, Hollywood!
Which YA book do you think would be ripe for adaptation? Let us know in the comments below.
Image: NBC
I had heard that a studio was looking into the YA series Leviathan and Pretties/Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. Leviathan being set in an alternate steampunk fantasy past before WW1 and has some hints of shakespeare’s twelfth night, while Uglies is a futuristic play on everyone has either been modified to look beautiful or not.
The video clip you posted only shows one second of the program (at least that is all I get.)
Funny or Die did WAAAY BETTER job with Snackpocalypse, where they even took some jokes off…
“If you give a mouse a cookie!” Such an epic narrative! HaHa
black square where vid should;d be.
Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother.”
what the fuck does YA mean?
I’m guessing Young Adult… As in young adult litterature 🙂
Young Adult