With the recent box office flop that was ‘Vampire Academy’, YA book fans are left asking yet again: are YA film adaptions doomed?
Let’s look at this past weekend. The ‘Vampire Academy’ film has been out for about two weeks now. With the extended holiday weekend, movie producers were hoping for a gracious numbers at the box office. In the end, the film only made $2.2 million dollars this President’s Day weekend. That’s not much when compared to other films that came out on the same date–the ‘Lego Movie’, for instance, was at the top of the charts with $62.4 million dollars.
The ‘Vampire Academy’ was also panned by critics. Its rating on Rotten Tomatoes rests at a 9% with very few positive remarks.
Yet this seems to be a growing trend with recent YA book-to-film adaptions. Just last year we saw the poor reception of films like ‘Beautiful Creatures’ and even ‘City of Bones’. Yet at the same time, films like ‘Warm Bodies’ and ‘Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ received rave reviews from critics and fans alike.
The latter certainly give fans hope for the future. With films like ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, ‘Divergent’ and ‘Maze Runner’ ahead, YA book enthusiasts are hoping that recent flops won’t be an indicator of future films’ success.
So what’s the deal? What makes a YA film adaption work? Is it in the actors, script, director–or even the source material?
Leave your thoughts in the comments!
Eh I’m kind of getting tired of every book i read being turned into a movie but that’s just me. >_>
Same. It’s getting old. And in the rush, they seem to be trying to adapt books with less-than-quality plots. I wish they’d just stick to the ones that actually merit it. 😛