Welcome back to the YA Movie News Roundup! Let's get to work.
In case you missed it, the Insurgent trailer launched on Friday and I....am not a fan. I wrote about it here and Posh did a Highly Scientific Analysis here.
Steven Spielberg has cast Ruby Barnhill, the below cutie, as Sophie in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG. Spielberg said about Barnhill, "After a lengthy search, I feel Roald Dahl himself would have found Ruby every bit as marvelous as we do."
Jennifer Garner has joined the upcoming adaptation of Joy Nicholson's YA book The Tribes of Palos Verdes.
Nicholson’s 1998 debut novel is sure to attract audiences interested in coming-of-age stories without all the trappings of science fiction and special effects, allowing these actors to really dig into the character development. Garner is set to play the mother of Monroe and Sheridan’s characters, who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown throughout the movie, while her husband gains a more and more lucrative career as surgeon to the stars. Monroe’s character Medina, and Sheridan’s character Jim, play brother and sister who are dropped into the California scene. Medina seeks refuge in surfing from her family’s dysfunction.
D.J. Caruso (I Am Number Four) is directing the film and Karen Croner (One True Thing) wrote the screenplay. The adaptation is now owned by Relativity’s new YA-focused department called R2 (read as R squared). The smaller scale and more intimate focus of the story make The Tribes of Palos Verdes stand out in comparison to the other YA films it will be surrounded by, including the final installment of The Hunger Games movies, the last two installments of the Divergent series, as well as other YA/dystopian book-turned-films, including The Maze Runner’s sequel and the adaptation also currently in production for The Fifth Wave.
Actress and model Bella Thorne is now writing a YA series and will be in the upcoming The Duff. Here's an interview with her!
Money talk: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies is already up to $117.6 million dollars in foreign markets, before it's even opened in the U.S. Mockingjay: Part 1 continues to murder the box office, bringing Lionsgate up to a billion dollars this year.
That's it for this week - give us your thoughts downstairs!