ENDER’S GAME: ANOTHER LACKLUSTER YOUNG ADULT RELEASE

As the mediocre box-office results of Ender’s Game demonstrate, Hollywood is having increasing difficulty converting books that were best sellers among young adults into hit movies. Steven Zeitchik, who covers the entertainment business for the Los Angeles Times, observes in today’s (Thursday) edition that, with the exception of the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games movies, which became “ridiculous blockbusters,” all of Hollywood’s efforts to adapt other young-adult best sellers have turned out to be virtually futile. “It adds up to a kind of 1 percent for young-adult adaptations,” Zeitchik wrote. “There may not be a category in the modern era with such a disparity between hits and misses.” Zeitchik notes that it’s difficult to figure out why the three blockbusters connected with young moviegoers and the others did not. While on the grown-up side there have also been best sellers that have failed as movies, he observes, “plenty of great films have rescued a marginal book.”