The worst thing that can happen to an adult fan of YA fiction is when, after you’ve spent all that time scouring the internet for news of a big-screen version of your fave series and fancasting every character, Hollywood adapts it ten years after it was popular. You’re now in your mid-to-late-20s, the cast is full of unplaceable actors who are all younger than you, and you’re certain you will find the upcoming film — and, by extension, yourself for being so into the source material — very cringe.
But if you devoured Scott Westerfeld’s dystopian series Uglies and just clocked that Netflix has, nearly 20 years later, turned it into a film, a morbid curiosity may linger. Maybe it’ll be amazing and the brain space you let the books take up will feel slightly less silly in retrospect. After all, YA series were often the first novels we felt were written just for us: The characters mirrored our more mundane problems, the complicated lore made us proud of knowing it inside and out, and the standard themes of triumphing over controlling powers seemed like the most important and challenging fiction could get.
Hollywood’s YA-adaptation craze doesn’t have the strictest linear timeline, but a huge chunk of the films can be directly blamed on three massively successful properties: Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. All three carried their popularity to completion (even though Mockingjay — Part 2 underperformed at the box office), and in the studios’ efforts to get a slice of that YA-fandom pie, we were flooded with expansive fantasy worlds, brooding romances, and fierce rebellions against dystopian forces. A few of the adaptations, such as The Maze Runner and Divergent, were enough of a hit to warrant a couple of sequels.
Yet many others failed to expand beyond the book’s audience, get a sequel, or even make back their budget. Years on, they are misfits and outcasts resigned to teen-movie obscurity. To honor Uglies making a late-stage attempt to revive the trend, here are 15 forgotten YA adaptations, ranked by the size of their cultural impact, from “They made a movie of that?!” to “Oh yeah, I kinda remember that.”
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007)
Budget: $45 million
Worldwide gross: $31.8 million
Notable stars: Alexander Ludwig, Frances Conroy, Christopher Eccleston
Congratulations if you recognize the words The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. This film loosely adapted the second book of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, which takes place in England in the 1960s and ’70s and follows a young English boy (he’s American in the film) fighting folkloric forces of darkness. Cooper hated the film, but at least she saw it — the $45 million production enticed only $31.4 million’s worth of audiences. Our deepest sympathies to Seeker-heads out there (who may be in their 60s) for having your treasured series become a lesson to aughts movie producers not to blindly chase Harry Potter success.
The 5th Wave (2016)
Budget: $38 million
Worldwide gross: $111.3 million
Notable stars: Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monrow, Ron Livingston
Experts are divided on when to denote the end of Hollywood’s YA-adaptation craze. The financial disappointment of the didn’t-need-to-be-two-parts Hunger Games conclusion was a warning siren in 2015, as was the megasuccess of much cheaper, non-fantasy hits like John Green’s melodrama The Fault in Our Stars the year before. When the final Maze Runner film, The Death Cure, dropped out in January 2018 — after it had been confirmed that the Divergent series would not be completed — there was an unspoken agreement this was the last time anyone would turn up for a YA dystopian franchise. This is all to say that, in 2016, the alien-invasion thriller and hopeful franchise starter The 5th Wave made only the most modest, er, wave. As often happens, the adaptation rights had been picked up before the novel was actually published, which speaks more to studio desperation than the material’s genuine cinematic value.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)
Budget: $40 million
Worldwide gross: $39.7 million
Notable stars: John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek, Josh Hutcherson
If Universal had put all its marketing energy into the fact that this film stars John C. Reilly as a redheaded vampire, rather than into teenage lead Chris Massoglia, who seems Photoshopped to look more like Robert Pattinson, this movie might have made back its budget. Alas, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant bared no fangs at the box office, perhaps owing in part to the complexity of the source material. The title alone contains the names of two novels adapted from a vampire trilogy that is just the start of a 12-book saga written by Darren Shan — which is the name of the main character but also a pseudonym for the Irish author Darren O’Shaughnessy. Talk about unnecessarily convoluted lore!
Vampire Academy (2014)
Budget: $30 million
Worldwide gross: $15.6 million
Notable stars: Zoey Deutch, Gabriel Byrne, Sarah Hyland
This is the first of three YA properties on this list to try a television adaptation after a disappointing film, but Vampire Academy is the only one for which the movie and the series equally flopped — Peacock canceled Vampire Academy after a single season last year. Maybe we should feel bad for author Richelle Mead, whose novels are set in a historic boarding school for vampires and their human guardians, but then again, her books are the only version of this story that has proved to be popular. A mismatched blend of undercooked snarky comedy and a mess of reheated vampire lore, the Zoey Deutch–and–Lucy Fry–starring film performed so poorly domestically that it simply did not make it to cinemas in the United Kingdom. And they love academies over there.
Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010)
Budget: $27 million
Worldwide gross: $16.5 million
Notable stars: Caitlin Stasey, Deniz Akdeniz, Phoebe Tonkin
A major event in Australian teen culture that made barely a whisper anywhere else, this long-awaited adaptation of author John Marsden’s series sees a Red Dawn–type situation happen in Australia, where a band of teen campers mount a guerrilla defense of their home. If we were judging its cultural impact in that continent, this would probably top the list — for a generation of teens, this was the biggest release of the year — but it’s dragged down by nobody going to see it outside of Australasia. Maybe it’s for the best: Rather than honoring the book’s choice not to name the invading country, the film blames a coalition of Asian powers that are after Australia’s resources. One of those classic xenophobic unforced errors.
Beautiful Creatures (2013)
Budget: $50–$60 million
Worldwide gross: $60 million
Notable stars: Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich, Jeremy Irons
Southern gothic for the Twilight crowd sounds like a sure thing, but Beautiful Creatures barely scraped back its $60 million budget in early 2013. Written and directed by veteran screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (who sounds like he’s one of the reclusive North Carolina witches at the heart of the story), Beautiful Creatures was adapted from the first volume in the Caster Chronicles series, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. It’s about a circle of “casters” (witches, to us mortals) who can perform spells and who reveal their true nature, either light or dark, when they come of age. Young Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) is approaching her 16th birthday, but because her ancestor once revived the Confederate ancestor of her new boyfriend, Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), after he died in the Civil War, the women of Lena’s family are doomed to become dark casters. It’s a shame audiences didn’t take to this bizarre cursed-romance story, but together with Twilight’s Washington setting, we are at least one film closer to having a YA fantasy movie for each American state.
I Am Number Four (2011)
Budget: $50–$60 million
Worldwide gross: $149.8 million
Notable stars: Alex Pettyfer, Dianna Agron, Teresa Palmer, Timothy Olyphant
Of the young, buzzy stars in this alien-fugitive drama, only Timothy Olyphant, who plays the guardian of a powerful high-school-age alien, still seems to consistently appear in exciting projects. This is obviously not what you want from a cast appealing to teenage audiences, but perhaps the now-in-their-late-30s actors would be household names if I Am Number Four were deserving of their combined talents. Alex Pettyfer is Number Four, and Teresa Palmer is Number Six — extraterrestrial beings with blossoming powers who are hunted by evil, less pretty aliens. This was a modest success internationally, but its domestic disappointment prevented any further adaptations of books by “Pittacus Lore.” (Sorry to disappoint, but this is a shared pseudonym. To our knowledge, no one is allowed to be called Pittacus Lore.)
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
Budget: $60 million
Worldwide gross: $95.3 million
Notable stars: Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Lena Headey
Two future stars of flagship Netflix shows, Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower, were the first unfortunate candidates for the onscreen Mortal Instruments experiment. It’s a series about human-angel hybrids called Nephilim (from creatures named in the Bible who are often interpreted as the offspring of humans and angels but also as descendants of Seth and Cain — it’s unclear if the series considers the Old Testament as canon) who hunt down demons in New York City. The only musical instrument appropriate for this film would be a slide whistle as it was a big old flop, but fans did get a three-season long Freeform series a few years later with Katherine McNamara and Dominic Sherwood replacing Collins and Bower. Maybe producers balked at the commitment of adapting the whole franchise: There are a total of 17 published novels in The Shadowhunters Chronicles, and author Cassandra Clare is still hard at work on future installments.
Chaos Walking (2021)
Budget: $100 million
Worldwide gross: $27 million
Notable stars: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Mads Mikkelsen, Cynthia Erivo
An uncharacteristically recent entry in the genre of mangled YA adaptations, this COVID-era release is a strange brew of talent. Directed by Doug Liman from an original draft by Charlie Kaufman, the dystopian survival thriller stars some of the best actors working — and if that’s not enough, Nick Jonas is also there. Based on a compelling, mature trilogy by Patrick Ness, the film charts the arrival of a woman on a colony world populated only by men who can hear and see one another’s thoughts. Rewrites, reshoots, and a whole-ass pandemic got in the way of this being any good, and it was quickly written off by Lionsgate, which was probably hoping to net another Hunger Games franchise, this time with established franchise talent. Sorry, Nick, better luck next time.
Beastly (2011)
Budget: $17 million
Worldwide gross: $43.2 million
Notable stars: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen
2011 was a big year for Alex Pettyfer: He starred in two young-adult film adaptations and got in Channing Tatum’s bad books. This modern-day adaptation of Beauty and the Beast is told from the perspective of a hairless, tatted-up beast named Kyle Kingson (Pettyfer), who is in love with his classmate (Vanessa Hudgens) and gained his monstrous appearance after bullying a secret witch (Mary-Kate Olsen). Of all the forgotten YA films, this adaptation of Alex Flinn’s novel went hardest for the Twilight crowd (just look at that book cover), but its transparent pandering failed to lure the same size audience. You can, however, play its tie-in game on the Wii, which has to count for something.
Mortal Engines (2018)
Budget: $100 million
Worldwide gross: $83.8 million
Notable stars: Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang, Jihae
The most lasting impact Mortal Engines made on popular culture is the fact that a museum exhibit in the film dedicated to “Deities of Lost America” contains statues of the Minions from Despicable Me. Yes, the terrible trio of Stuart, Kevin, and Bob are in a movie produced and co-written by Peter Jackson, made much funnier by the fact that every Despicable Me installment has grossed over $500 million worldwide while Mortal Engines is considered one of the biggest flops of all time. Like Chaos Walking, this was a grand, ambitious saga that missed its window of relevance and interested no audience. Mortal Engines’s adventure of massive, mobile cities in the far-flung future came out for the first Christmas in four years when nobody was competing against Star Wars. It lost hard to Bumblebee, Into the Spider-Verse, Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman, and Illumination’s own The Grinch. The Minion brand will forever haunt this film.
Ender’s Game (2013)
Budget: $110 million
Worldwide gross: $125 million
Notable stars: Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Harrison Ford
The war games and space armadas of Ender’s Game struggled to appeal to 2013’s teens as much as the novel did in 1985, and the movie barely recouped its hefty budget. It appears the kids didn’t care about the military manipulating teens into committing atrocities like they used to. Granted, only the first novel in the series could be considered young adult, and despite the massive marketing effort to start a Star Wars–meets–Harry Potter franchise, it kind of had nowhere to go; the much more grave and philosophical sequel, Speaker for the Dead, would likely never make it onto the big screen in a recognizable, intact way. Also, author Orson Scott Card is one of the biggest homophobes in the sci-fi lit community, so let’s count our blessings that we have to deal with only one very public anti-LGBTQ+ author behind a fantasy franchise at the moment.
Eragon (2006)
Budget: $100 million
Worldwide gross: $250 million
Notable stars: Ed Speleers, John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz
Christopher Paolini was 15 when he started work on Eragon, the first book in the best-selling Inheritance Cycle, and to honor the integrity of the source material, 20th Century Fox should have hired a 15-year-old to do justice to Paolini’s prose. For reasons outside our control, you can’t let a teenager direct a $100 million movie, so they handed the reins to veteran visual-effects artist Stefen Fangmeier instead. This hero’s journey took heavy inspiration from the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and George Lucas, but since the film dropped a wee bit after The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars prequel trilogies, the unoriginality of Eragon’s story and characters felt especially prominent. Still, the film was a box-office success thanks to international takings — if you’re wondering why high-fantasy movies do well overseas, it’s due in part to imagined worlds being relatable to a greater variety of audiences. The film also let John Malkovich channel his best “Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons,” even though Irons was also part of the cast.
The Golden Compass (2007)
Budget: $180 million
Worldwide gross: $360 million
Notable stars: Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green, Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen
As the only film on this list that cost this much or earned this much and is likely the most recognizable to the average reader, it’s hard to deny The Golden Compass the top spot — but we did anyway, sorry. The Golden Compass seemingly had everything going for it: a beloved fantasy property with complex, mature themes; an expansive world to explore them in; and a budget big enough to pull it all off. But in trying to tailor-make a hit, New Line Cinema and writer-director Chris Weitz (whose next film would be the much more successful The Twilight Saga: New Moon) made costly errors. The massive budget meant the film had to be a megahit to succeed, and by softening the anti-organized-religion critiques of Philip Pullman’s book, the film pissed off secular book fans, but because the themes were still present, it pissed off religious audiences, too. Not to worry, the trilogy got the prestige fantasy-TV treatment with HBO’s His Dark Materials.
The Host (2013)
Budget: $40 million
Worldwide gross: $63 million
Notable stars: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Diane Kruger, William Hurt
You may have some problems with this comparatively minor alien-possession love-triangle flick from the writer of The Truman Show and Gattaca topping the list, but it’s based on a novel by Stephenie Meyer. Did you catch that? The Stephenie Meyer. Do you know how much cultural cachet that carried in the late oughts and early 2010s? No, it doesn’t matter that this story of a young dystopian survivor having her body invaded by a curious alien from a race of “Souls” barely made back its budget and became a bloated flop. Did we mention the part when Melanie-Wanderer — the names of the human woman and the alien parasite — must choose between one boy who fancies the alien and one who fancies the woman hosting the alien? And did we mention how this all happened to a now four-time Academy Award–nominated actress? The Host best exemplifies the Twilight and Hunger Games era of YA films, in which producers were directly playing to the established online fans of the novels and banking on their approval being enough to win box-office success, but because this film cost only $40 million, it’s less of a money loser than numerous blockbuster-size productions on this list. Instead of looking at Beautiful Creatures or The Mortal Instruments and thinking, How can we make this as big as Twilight?, producers asked the author of Twilight if she had anything that was already halfway there. It didn’t pay off (this film made $26 million domestically), but it’s so typical of the lazy thinking that made the YA craze so iconic. The Host also gets the top spot because it’s a stand-alone book and was saved the embarrassment of having any planned sequels canceled.
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