The success of Suzanne Collins’ young adult fantasy series The Hunger Games, as well as the highly anticipated March release of its film adaptation, has the industry clamoring to cash in on the newest teen pop culture obsession: strong-willed dystopian heroines.
It was announced this week that the independent production company Kerry, Kimmel and Pollack (KK&P) purchased the film rights to the post-apocalyptic novel Eden by Keary Taylor. The story follows Eve (of course), a teenage girl struggling unravel the secrets of her past in a futuristic world where all but two percent of the human population was wiped out by killer robots. The similarities to Collins’s literary hit seem to end with the female protagonist, but that hasn’t stopped it from being marketed as a “cross between The Hunger Games and The Terminator.” [Variety]
As if it couldn’t be more primed to become the next teen sensation, Mark Morgan, who helped bring such adolescent literature as the Twilight series and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief to the big screen, is producing. Brett Hudson, Michael Pollack and “Beautiful Creatures” series co-author, Kami Garcia, have also been tapped to produce, but no word yet on possible choices to pen and direct the film.
Has the teen sci-fi/fantasy craze hit its peak? Will young audiences embrace Eden?