Are television producers trawling young adult cinema for TV franchises, as Twilight series greenlit?

Twihards (as apparently they are known as) have been rejoicing the news earlier today that the popular film franchise Twilight, based on the book series by Stephanie Meyers, has been greenlit for a television series adaptation. 

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate Television have optioned for the book and film franchise and is currently in early development, with Sinead Daly - whose credits include Tell Me Lies, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Raised by Wolves, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Get Down - attached to write the script.

No further details have been revealed regarding a filming date or what network the television series will be broadcast on; Lionsgate do have a channel available through Amazon Video however they may shop it around to a number of cable networks, including their own STARZ network or potentially HBO. However, sources that spoke to THR have stated that Daly is in discussions if the adaptation will stay faithful to the books or be an offshoot from what has been presented from the Twilight universe so far. Stephanie Meyers, the author of the books, is said to be on hand to offer guidance in the direction the television show may take. 

It marks the second announcement this month of a popular young adult film series being adapted for television, after news broke that the Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe film Cruel Intentions will be adapted for the small screen. That itself was a modern-for-it’s-day retelling of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, originally published in 1782 by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which itself was adapted for American audiences with the Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons 1998 and a television version in 2022. 

Amazon Television are said to be helming the Cruel Intentions reboot, but no Sarah Michelle Gellar involvement this time around - speaking to Variety about the series, she responded “I’ve learned a lesson with that, which is it’s a very difficult process. And eventually, or inevitably, you’re going to be let down. Because some people want a new [version], some people want this, and my place in something like that only makes you compare it to the original. And if there’s a new take and new whatever, then they get a chance to stand on their own.”

Gellar filmed a pilot of an initial Cruel Intentions television series in 2015, however a number of major networks passed on the project, which lends itself to the lessons that the former Buffy actress learned regarding the transition from big screen to small screen.

The Handmaid's Tale has been one of the successes of a book that transferred to the big screen and then back to television; before Elizabeth Moss took on the role of June Osbourne, Natasha Richardson played the lead role in the 1990 film adaptation, alongside Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t make quite the mark that the television series has. 

It would appear that the trend of mining popular young adult films of yesteryear into modern day television adaptation has once again been the genre du jour for television executives; who could forget the television adaptations in the ‘90s that included Dirty Dancing and a pre-Friends Jennifer Anniston portraying Ferris Bueller’s sister in the short lived television series based around the John Hughes classic. 

We already have forgotten about them until learning about two classic properties from the recent decades; but if video games are becoming the latest on-trend material for film and television through the successes of The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, maybe those beloved movies of the ‘90s and ‘00s, including She’s All That and American Pie, will translate over to television. Here’s hoping - kind of.