Hollywood's newest trend?

I have some great news! It seems that Hollywood is finally retiring the zombie and vampire fads of the past decade! Granted that earlier this year we did see the release of "I, Frankensten" and "Vampire Academy", but the fact that you can count the number of undead movie releases on one hand, is a great sign.

"The Hunger Games: Games of Hunger"
Oh, its just "Hunger Games"?

Yes it seems the champion is being dethroned, so what pray tell is going to take it's place? Everybody always jokes about how Hollywood is fresh out of ideas, but movies will still, inevitably, come out. There is a trend on the rise, and "Twilight" and "Hunger Games" are serving as the bridge into this new drift of film.

Prepare for the reign of young adult fiction book movies.

Last year saw the release of plenty of these films, including (but not limited to) "Enders Game", "Beautiful Creatures", "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones", "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters", "Hunger Games: Catching Fire", "The Host", and many more.

"The Hunger Games: Maze Runner"
Whoops, its just "The Maze Runner..."

The danger is that they're being replaced with as many Hunger games clones as possible. Now don't get me wrong, "Hunger Games" was extremely well done (though a bit unsettling for my tastes, what with the child murder and all). My issue with this is that because it was made so well, every studio wants to emulate it with every book they can get their hands on.

That isn't necessarily bad, but it could (and seems like it will) get old really fast. Expect to see a lot of these in the next year or two. 2014 will see the release of "Divergent", "The Maze Runner", "The Giver", and "Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 1" just to name a few. Disney also announced last year that they'll be helming a movie based on the "Artemis Fowl " book series. Any way you slice it, its a great time to be a young adult actor/actress in Hollywood.

"Percy Jackson & the Hunger Games"
Wait, wait..."Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"

So what is the "Hunger Games" theme that everybody is playing off of? Well, there's a few key elements:
1: Lead character is 14-17 years old.
2. Dystopian setting (anti-utopia, usually controlled by a well meaning, but overbearing government)
3. Love triangle
4. Dark/gritty color scheme

But I do have a big fat problem with this, in a way. Most of these books are part of a series (Twilight, Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, Enders Game, etc.), and the movie big-wigs are milking the crap out of it. Aw hell, I'll just say it. STOP DOING TWO-PART MOVIES. This started with Harry Potter, and was very necessary, as the book was gigantic, and had a LOT of story that was being built up over the course of seven books. But then you have a series like Hunger Games. I haven't read the books, but I've seen them, and they're not very big. If they can fit the first two into their own movies, they do NOT need two movies to tell the last book. Hobbit, I'm looking at you too. One book, three movies?! But I digress...

"The Hunger Games: The Giver"
Ack! This one's just "The Giver"

In short, get ready to be sick of movies starring angsty teens in repetitive plots. I'm placing my bet that we'll be seeing a lot of them for the next 10 years or so.

Now if only they had waited until now to do an Eragon movie...maybe it would have been at least a little better.