The Death and Destruction of The Young Adult Film Craze

A highly saturated market is on a steep downtrend. 

Stop in the name of all that is teenaged!

Over the last few years we've seen young adult novels turn the cineplexes into a hotbed of books turned into franchise films. Most of those have been about the dystopian future in which teenagers try to overpower and defeat an adult force that's obsessed with controlling the world's fate. Others have been magical tales about post pubescent boys and girls battling demons, creatures, and whatever else they could throw together to cash in on.

Through The Hunger Games series, The Divergent movies, and The Maze Runner films, too many common themes are shared and it appears that audiences may have finally had enough. The latter of the two have suffered defeat at the box office with their latest releases declining sharply in ticket sales and some of their fan base divided over the quality of the movies themselves. 

With Harry Potter nowhere to be found and Ender's Game suffering a blustering defeat, these supposedly surefire hits are seeing dwindling receipts, poor production values, and in the case of Ascendant, a budget that might be nearly half of its predecessor. Even the highly regarded Hunger Games series saw a huge decrease in numbers. The last movie in the series opened with 20 million less than Mockingjay Part One and over 50 million less than the first Hunger Games film. 

With the numbers looking the way they do, I'd say people are tiring of the young adult to film craze. Might it be time we give it a rest? With Percy Jackson dying a quick death at the sword of the cinema, The Mortal Instruments suffering a mortal fate, and The 5th Wave an alienating disappointment, it's high time these go away for a while. Come back when you have something new to offer us. Yeah, give us more reboots. Not really. 




-CG