What do the Harry Potter series, The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, and Silence of the Lambs all have in common? They were all successful novels before they were massive box office successes. In just 2014 alone 14 books were adapted to the big screen, ranging from classic novels such as Lois Lowery’s The Giver to new releases as illustrated by The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. On March 21, 2014 Divergent, the first novel in the young adult trilogy by Veronica Roth, took the number one spot in the box office on its premiere weekend earning $56 million. The book was published in April of 2011 and two years later Summit Entertainment purchased media rights to the book before the final book in the trilogy, Allegiant was even published. Why is making a film adaptation of a book so brilliant, you may ask; well, the answer to that lies within the fans. The majority of these new films are adapted from young adult thrillers, such as the Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies. There was already a prominent fan base there. So how does the PR team reach out to those young and dedicated fans? By utilizing teen and young adult methods such as social media. The Divergent movie’s Twitter page has 208 thousand followers. The page encouraged interaction between fans by asking fans to tweet a review of the film using the hashtag #DivergentReview. The film also used stores frequented by youth, such as Hot Topic to sell merchandise and paraphernalia. The items being sold ranged from various t-shirts to coffee mugs and even iPhone cases. By selling the products at Hot Topic a certain audience was targeted and reached: young adults and teenagers. What else do all of these book-to-movie successes have in common? Beautiful people in them, of course! Even though in the many of the aforementioned books the main characters are described as “average,” “large nosed” and “plain,” all of the actors casted are generally attractive. Movies with a predominately female audience are guaranteed to cast sought-after young men for male roles in order to boost word-of-mouth advertising and viewings. Post-filming, the cover of the books are changed to match the movie cover, selling books with the familiar faces of famous movie stars. Edited by Melanie Ford, Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014
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