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The 'Divergent' Challenge: Rally Teen Books and Movies

Young Adult Books on the Big Screen

In the best-selling novel "Divergent," Beatrice "Tris" Prior, the rebellious 16-year-old heroine, must fight a totalitarian system to save society from civil war and mass murder.

When the $85 million film adaptation opens March 21, Tris has an even bigger mission: to help rescue the sagging teen publishing and movie industries.

"Divergent," starring Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet and Theo James, is under enormous pressure to deliver a hit. After a string of disappointing teen-fantasy adaptations last year, studio executives are looking to "Divergent'" as a gauge of the public's appetite for yet another big blockbuster series. Many in the publishing industry are also hoping "Divergent" will help boost young-adult book sales, which fell last year after years of seemingly unstoppable growth.

Earlier

Bestselling author Veronica Roth talks to WSJ's Sara Murray about writing tips, leaked copies and the chaos of releasing the lastest and highly anticipated installment of her Divergent trilogy, "Allegiant." Photo: AP

After the runaway success of "The Hunger Games" franchise, but a string of disappointing teen-fantasy adaptations this year, "Divergent" is seen as the litmus-test for whether audiences still have an appetite for yet another big blockbuster series. Alexandra Alter reports on the News Hub.

For now, Lions Gate Entertainment LGF -0.87 % is betting that "Divergent" has all the necessary ingredients to become a mega hit. The "Divergent" trilogy, by 25-year-old writer Veronica Roth, has sold more than 16 million copies since the first book was published in 2011. The story is set in Chicago in a distant future. Society is divided into factions based on moral virtues—bravery, kindness, honesty, selflessness and wisdom—and teenagers are required to take an aptitude test to help them determine which faction they should join. Those who don't fit into a single faction, like the heroine Tris, are labeled "divergent." In Hollywood-ese, it's "The Hunger Games" meets "The Breakfast Club."

Ticket presale tracking forecasts that the film will pull in $50 to $60 million its opening weekend, putting it in league with the first "Twilight" movie. Strong foreign sales for the book series—which is published in 44 languages—suggest that the movie could perform well abroad. Production on a sequel, "Insurgent," is already scheduled for May. And Tris, and her boyfriend and mentor, Four, even have their own collectible Barbie-doll action figures.

TEEN QUEENS Shailene Woodley, above, as 'Divergent's' Tris (with Theo James). ENLARGE
TEEN QUEENS Shailene Woodley, above, as 'Divergent's' Tris (with Theo James). Summit Entertainment

The latest crop of teen film adaptations have mostly been critical and commercial bombs. Apart from "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," which grossed $424 million domestically last year, theatergoers seem to be growing weary of big tent-pole fantasy franchises—even if their book sales were strong.

Richelle Mead's hit series "Vampire Academy," a supernatural romance set at a boarding school for vampires, has more than nine million copies in print. But the film made just $7.8 million at the box office. Other heavily hyped adaptations of best sellers fizzled. "The Host," based on Stephenie Meyer's science-fiction novel about parasitic aliens, brought in just $27 million. Cassandra Clare's "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones," about a demon-fighting teenage girl, sold $31 million in tickets, failing to recover productions costs. "Beautiful Creatures," a supernatural Southern romance by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, brought in just $19 million, despite book sales of over 3.5 million. Those films were unable to excite their core fan bases of teen readers, much less lure adults to theaters.

Erik Feig, motion picture group co-president at Lionsgate, the studio behind the "Twilight" and "Hunger Games" films as well as "Divergent," says the studio has grown wary of formulaic teen fantasy-movie pitches ever since 2008's "Twilight."

"We got every single kind of Romeo and Juliet with star-crossed species that you can think of: She's an angel, he's a devil. He's a werewolf, she has a silver bullet," Mr. Feig said. "We did not pick them up."

Jennifer Lawrence as 'The Hunger Games' Katniss. ENLARGE
Jennifer Lawrence as 'The Hunger Games' Katniss. Lionsgate

Mr. Feig said he initially rolled his eyes when an executive pitched him "Divergent," thinking it sounded just like Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games.'" When he learned more about the story, especially the idea that society is divided into factions determined by personality archetypes, he was intrigued. "That was an idea I had never really heard before," he said.

If the "Divergent" movie is a hit, it could help jump-start teen book sales. For the last decade, the young adult market has been one of the few booming categories in publishing. Some 16,800 young-adult titles were released in 2012, up from 1,481 in 2005, according to Bowker, which tracks the publishing industry. Children's books stood out as the fastest-growing publishing category in 2011 and 2012, buoyed by a growing adult audience and a string of box-office hits that brought in tens of millions of new readers.

But lately, the meteoric growth has started to level off for the first time in years. Publishers' net revenues from children's book sales dropped to $1.6 billion in 2013, down from $1.7 billion in 2012, a 7% decline, according to the Association of American Publishers. Some book industry analysts say young-adult sales dipped because there wasn't a single mega franchise dominating pop culture in 2013—a theory some industry experts call "The Hunger Games effect." The sales bump from "The Hunger Games" movies was so strong in 2012 that it lifted the entire category. Sales for the series, which had 24 million copies in circulation before the first movie was released, surged. There are now around 65 million copies of the books in circulation.

"The movie gave the books a huge boost and brought it to the phenomenon level," says David Levithan, publisher and editorial director of Scholastic, which publishes "The Hunger Games." "Suddenly we were seeing men in suits reading it on the subway. That's what separates something from being a success in the YA range to being a phenomenon across all levels."

NEXT GENERATION Upcoming teen movies include an adaptation of James Dashner's fantasy series 'The Maze Runner.' ENLARGE
NEXT GENERATION Upcoming teen movies include an adaptation of James Dashner's fantasy series 'The Maze Runner.' Twentieth Century Fox

As the "Hunger Games" frenzy faded last year, sales sank. Publishers scaled back, releasing some 10,965 young-adult titles last year, a 34% drop from 2012, according to Bowker.

It is no longer easy to point to a single trend in the teen market as a model for what works. Tellingly, some of the most anticipated movie adaptations due out later this year break the mold of what once appeared to be an infallible formula for success (vampires and wizards). They include an adaptation of James Dashner's best-selling fantasy series, "The Maze Runner" and "If I Stay," a drama based on Gayle Forman's novel about a girl who survives a horrific car crash. "The Giver," which stars Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep and Taylor Swift, is based on Lois Lowry's 1993 dystopian classic.

This June, 20th Century Fox will release a drama based on John Green's megahit, "The Fault in Our Stars," which will also star Ms. Woodley and Ansel Elgort. (Mr. Elgort, who plays Ms. Woodley's character's brother in "Divergent," plays her boyfriend in "The Fault in Our Stars.") The novel, which has sold seven million copies and has spent 113 weeks on the best-seller list, features a witty 16-year-old girl, Hazel, who has stage-four cancer and falls in love with a boy she meets at a cancer-support group. It is unlikely that there will be Barbie-doll action figures.

Mr. Green, 36, says he sees the forthcoming film as a sign that filmmakers are responding to young readers' increasingly diverse tastes. "The mainstream conversation is about dystopian and paranormal, but inside the world of YA, what's really happening is this broadening to contemporary realistic novels, historical fiction, mysteries, super-hard sci fi," Mr. Green says.

Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort in an adaptation of John Green's bestselling 'A Fault in Our Stars.' ENLARGE
Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort in an adaptation of John Green's bestselling 'A Fault in Our Stars.' Twentieth Century Fox

Next month, Mr. Green's publisher, Penguin Young Readers Group, is releasing an additional three million copies of the novel, in paperback and a movie tie-in edition.

In the case of "Divergent," the movie has been integral to the series' success from the start. Ms. Roth was 21 and just about to graduate from Northwestern when she sold the series in the spring of 2010. She had no fan-following to speak of. Summit Entertainment, now owned by Lionsgate, optioned the novel before it was published and used its marketing muscle to quickly turn an unknown debut author into a household name. They had a significant tool at their disposal: direct access to fans of "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games." Lionsgate plugged "Divergent" as a buzzy new romance on its "Twilight" Facebook page, which has 45 million fans. The studio also passed out free copies at the premieres for the final "Twilight" film and "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."

The book became an instant best seller, and Ms. Roth quickly produced two more, "Insurgent" and "Allegiant." "Allegiant," the final book in the series, broke first-day sales records at HarperCollins last October, selling 455,000 copies the day it came out. (HarperCollins is owned by News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal.) That month, Amazon put out a news release saying that the "Divergent" trilogy was outselling "The Hunger Games" by five to one. Ms. Roth's books now occupy four of the top 20 spots on Amazon's best-seller list.

Being crowned the successor to "The Hunger Games" is a marketing boon that could backfire. The two stories are undeniably similar. Both are high stakes, dystopian stories that feature 16-year-old female narrators who come from humble origins, leave their families, undergo extensive combat training (and dramatic makeovers) and fight to bring down a totalitarian system. But some fans of "The Hunger Games" have already compared "Divergent" unfavorably to Ms. Collins' books, and the movie could face similar scrutiny.

ENLARGE
Illustration By Yao Xiao

Lucy Fisher, one of the producers of "Divergent," said that the inevitable comparisons to "The Hunger Games" are a publicity hurdle that could ultimately prove useful. "No one wants unrealistic expectations, because then really solid success can somehow seem pale," she said. "That said, whenever a movie wows audiences around the world, it makes audiences want that experience again."

With the penultimate Hunger Games movie due out this fall, and several more big adaptations in the pipeline, the fantasy-franchise trend shows no signs of grinding to an abrupt halt. Studios have recently snapped up hot teen titles like Sally Green's novel about a conflicted teen witch, "Half Bad," Rick Yancey's alien invasion story, "The 5th Wave," and "An Ember in the Ashes," a debut fantasy novel by Sabaa Tahir.

"Everyone is hopeful, because so many books have been optioned," says Ben Schrank, president and publisher of Razorbill, a young-adult imprint of Penguin Random House. "These new movies need to work, and then there will still be teen movies next year."

Corrections & Amplifications
The sequel to "Divergent" is "Insurgent." An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited "Allegiant" as the second book in the series.

Write to Alexandra Alter at alexandra.alter@wsj.com

4 comments
Bernard Levine
Bernard Levine subscriber

When Progressive novelists and film makers imagine the future, it is invariably a Totalitarian dystopia.

At first whiff this might seem odd -- until one recalls that Totalitarian and Progressive are synonymous.

Or to view those terms dynamically (dynamism is totally alien to static Progressives) Totalitarian dystopia is the future perfect (or perfect future) of Progressivism.

Totalitarian dystopia is the promise of a perpetual target for youthful romantic rebellion. A target they erect themselves.

Progressives envision themselves as youthful romantic rebels -- but that is only their larval stage. After they pupate they metamorphose into bureaucrats.

Carl Castrogiovanni
Carl Castrogiovanni subscriber

Mr. Barrows,

Posting advertisements in public comment forums is SPAM.

Using SPAM as a marketing tactic is rather foolish (to say the least)...

Your entire posting history is just advertisements - really unwise.

Anne McGuire
Anne McGuire

This looks like it's going to be another "Starship Troopers" - in other words, an overpriced bust.

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