The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze runner; all of these books have been praised around the world by critics and teen fans alike. With The Hunger Games - selling over 50 million copies globally, Divergent - selling 8 million copies globally, and The Maze Runner selling over 6.5 million copies since it first hit the shelf. All of these books have been made into ridiculously popular movie franchises with tens of millions of fans each. So why has there been no influx of exorbitantly popular YA Sci-fi?
Now, The Darkest Minds - following in the footsteps of YA sci-fi so far seems like it is set to lose 20th Century Fox millions of dollars. Released in 3,127 theaters, the movie was met with a resounding splat at the box office, earning only around $6 million domestically and not faring much better overseas.
The focus of much current teen attention in regards to entertainment seems to be in YA films set in our own reality, finding enjoyment in the obstacles that we as teenagers seem to face.
Monét Richardson, 15 and an avid viewer of both YA sci-fi and YA fiction says: “I like YA sci-fi because it’s different from reality, however these films are getting too cliché. Everything, Everything is one of my favourites out of the YA fiction genre because it is light-hearted - no complex storylines and overall these movies are much more relatable.”
It could be said that an influx of YA fiction could be the biggest attribute to the demise of YA sci-fi. However, in my opinion it is a simple case of change in mind - it seems that we as teenagers are looking for something we can relate to instead of something far out of our world. Maybe one day we will see the next Hunger Games or Divergent but for now we are stuck in the realm of barely reletable entertainment.
