Zero Dark Thirty Producer Taking On New YA Sci-Fi Adaptation Unremembered
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With the box office success of Divergent this weekend, young adult fiction continues to be a major hunting ground for movie studios. According to THR, Reliance Entertainment and Kintop Pictures are at it again, acquiring the film rights to author Jessica Brody’s Unremembered, which is the first book in a trilogy.
Unremembered follows a 16-year-old girl who finds herself floating in the Pacific Ocean after a terrible plane crash of Freedom Airlines flight 121. She has no memory of her life before the crash, so she’s forced to put together her identity and history with only one clue: a boy named Zen who claims he helped her escape a top-secret science experiment from an evil corporation known as Diotech. The series features elements of time travel, mystery, and mad science.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books published Unremembered in March 2013, and its follow-up, Unforgotten, hit bookstores last month. The untitled third and final book in the series is due to hit bookshelves in February 2015. Deepak Nayar and Tabrez Noorani from Tamasha Talkies Productions are attached to produce the film adaptation, along with Soumya Sundaresh from Citrusmuse Productions. Nayar produced the films Vampire Academy, Paranoia, and Bend It Like Beckham, while Noorani is a veteran producer of Zero Dark Thirty, Life of Pi, and Slumdog Millionaire.
“The premise of the story was very compelling with a strong central female character,” says Noorani of Unremembered. “The book itself is action packed and well balanced to appeal to a universal audience.”
Unremembered is author Jessica Brody’s ninth novel (two adult novels and seven YA novels), which include her debut book The Fidelity Files, Love Under Cover, and 52 Reasons to Hate My Father.
Young adult film adaptations are hit or miss. For every Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, you have a Golden Compass, Beautiful Creatures, or The Spiderwick Chronicles. Even when a movie series becomes a box office success, that doesn’t always mean it’s very good (i.e. Twilight). The Hunger Games is that rare breed of YA film adaptations that are both commercially and critically successful. I really can’t tell if the Unremembered trilogy has the makings of a winner or a loser.
The Unremembered movie doesn’t have film distribution yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Lionsgate/Summit Entertainment or The Weinstein Company pick it up. You can check out the book trailer below, and pick up a copy of Unremembered from Amazon right here.
