YA has been a hot commodity in Hollywood for a long time. With the success of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, it seems like producers are always looking for a new YA book to turn into a mega box office hit. So far we’ve seen movies based on Divergent, The Giver, Beautiful Creatures, City of Bones, Vampire Academy, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, If I Stay, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, The Book Thief, How to Deal, The DUFF, Everything, Everything, Me, and Earl, and the Dying Girl, Before I Fall, and, amazingly, many more. We’ve also seen TV shows based on City of Bones, The 100, Famous in Love, Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, and a few others.
Despite all the ones that already exist, 2018 and 2019 are lining up to be incredible for YA books in film. We’ve already seen the success of Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda being adapted into Love, Simon, plus the adaptation of Ready Player One, but there’s more to come.
The next YA adaptation is based on Beth Reekles’s The Kissing Booth, which just hit Netflix on May 11. If you’ve been dying for another rom-com while you wait for Love, Simon to hit digital and blu-ray, this might just be what you need to hold you over.
On August 3, Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds will be hitting theaters and we even have an amazing trailer featuring Amandla Stenberg already.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for US Drama – the highest honor at the festival. Since then, it’s been screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and scored a nationwide US release for August 3 as well – hope y’all are ready for a double feature of YA.
Walter Dean Myer’s Monster and Lisa Klein’s Ophelia both debuted at Sundance Film Festival as well, but neither has been picked up for distribution and given a release date yet.
Production began on an adaptation of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in July 2017 and it’ll be hitting Netflix on August 17 – a perfect Friday night rom-com to cuddle in with! We don’t have a trailer yet, but even the behind the scenes images we’ve seen look amazing.
Mortal Engines, the Philip Reeve post-apocalyptic, is about as old as the average YA audience, but it’s finally getting a movie! This is dropping in theaters on December 14 – because nothing makes you appreciate the holidays more than a dystopian world. Nothing.
Ruta Sepetys’s Between Shades of Grey devastated us all when it released in 2012 and in 2016, production on a movie adaptation began. The movie, Ashes in the Snow, has been in limbo for a while, but we know a final cut exists since there was a private screening for Lithuanian officials during a recent visit to the United States. There’s no definitive release date for the US yet, but the film will be premiering in Lithuania on October 12, so we can only hope it’ll be around the same time here.
Similarly, we don’t have a release date for the adaptation of Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’ yet, but all signs point to a late 2018 premiere. And not only will we be getting the movie, we also are getting all new Dolly Parton songs for the film. Yes!
The Hate U Give had a setback when they had to recast and refilm scenes featuring Starr’s boyfriend, but this book is absolutely coming to our screens soon. No official release date, but it has been confirmed it’ll be coming this fall.
With this many movies, hopefully they’re successful enough to encourage the TV and film industry to keep making more adaptations of our favorite YA books! 2019 is already set to include Chaos Walking, based on Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go, but we’re obviously hoping for more adaptations.
Which adaptations are *you* hoping to see on a big or small screen in the near future? Tweet us your recs at @PiqueBeyond.