Teen Lit Rocks

If I Stay Trailer and Other YA Page-to-Screen News

April 17, 2014 By Sandie 2 Comments

My party of five is still on Spring Break vacation, but since I’m writing a movie review while my youngest takes a nap, I figured I’d pop in and share the “If I Stay” trailer (hooray for Gayle Forman) and share some other young adult adaptation news. I am trying not to have high hopes, because great expectations can lead to great disappointments, but I am VERY excited about “If I Stay,” and I think Choe Moretz is a particularly mature and nuanced young actress who will do Mia justice. And the boy, well, I don’t know much about British actor Jamie Blackley (although I started watching “U Want Me 2 Kill Him” the other day TV),  but he is definitely selling me on the edgy-but-cute rocker that is Adam Wilde.

Here’s the If I Stay trailer!

So what do you think of the trailer? I am really digging it, and the actress who plays her mom (Mireille Enos) is awesome (“The Killing,” “World War Z,” “Big Love”).

Other YA page-to-screen news:

• Author Rick Yancey confirmed on Facebook that Choe Moretz is going to play Cassie in “The 5th Wave” adaptation. So excited! Now I wonder who will play Evan Walker (and the rest of the cast, but mostly Evan).
• Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Impossible) is helming the adaptation to Patrick Ness’ “A Monster Calls,” which is already slated for a 2016 release. Ness is also writing the adaptation! That means “A Monster Calls” could hit theaters before the “Chaos Walking” adaptation, which has been in development with Robert Zemeckis attached to direct from a Charlie Kaufman script for a while now.
• Rebecca Serle’s “When You Were Mine” is in pre-production at Universal with the awesome screenwriting team of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (“500 Days of Summer,” “The Spectacular Now”).
• “Trash” by Andy Mulligan has already been turned into a film by director Oscar-nominated director Stephen Daldry (“The Hours,” “The Reader”) and stars Rooney Mara, Martin Sheen and a bunch of Brazilian actors.

Of course, hundreds of other YA books have been optioned or are in development, but that doesn’t mean they’ll actually hit the big screen. Plenty of books get optioned and even get scripts, but they’re not all fast-tracked for adaptation.