For my paper, I would like to write about the influx of franchises in Hollywood, mostly adaptations from Young Adult literature. In the past, children’s literature like The Princess Bride were made into films, but it didn’t create this sort of assembly line for sequels and spinoffs, like the Harry Potter franchise, as well as Twilight, Hunger Games etc. There’s also the pattern of the studios drawing these franchises out as long as they could, usually by making the final part into a double feature within the double feature. It’s also interesting to note that most of these YA adaptations falls between three subthemes/genres; fantasy, supernatural of dystopia, and all include a romantic element. I feel like this might too broad still, but I’m struggling on how to narrow it down.
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Alana, this is a great topic but, as you say, a broad one. One way to narrow would be to select a particular franchise as a case study: Hunger Games seems like a natural choice, but I think you could make an argument for any number of examples. One factor that you might also want to consider is the wide adult readership many of these series have found—I know there’s been a lot written about this (and this 2014 article in Slate was the essay that launched a thousand rebuttals: http://slate.me/1pUzu6R). This phenomenon is interesting both b/c it may factor into the perceived marketability of these films, and also have implications for their construction (i.e. they need to be “adult” enough to appeal broadly, but not too violent to preempt a PG-13 rating—I’m thinking of the elided brutality in HG, but this probably applies to sexual themes as well). This is mostly just speculation, but let me know if I can provide more sources or further assistance in refining your project. Looking forward to reading!
P.S. One more recent essay to check out: http://nyti.ms/2jH8jEs