A short-lived blockbuster craze sprang and sprang out of flames in record time for a very good reason

A short-lived blockbuster craze sprang and sprang out of flames in record time for a very good reaso ...

Hollywood loves few things more than seeing what worked for another studio and then jumping aboard the bandwagon, and it almost always yields results that can be generously described as inconsistent. Thanks to the success of Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games, the 2000s and 2010s were swamped with YA literary adaptations.

The ratio of hits to misses beyond that was shocking to put it lightly, as three aforementioned franchises all failed at the start, and even the few few who managed to get sequels never maintained anything approaching a decent level of critical and commercial success from the beginning.

A Reddit thread asking why futuristic dystopian stories with sci-fi and fantasy elements have died out has a shockingly simple answer; because so many of them have failed and burned spectacularly at the box office. It would be an understatement to say the industry wasted a fortune on the short-lived craze.

The Maze Runner succeeded in completing a trilogy, and Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One was a smash hit, but The Divergent Series was slashed to the curbs, while the likes of Ender's Game, Mortal Engines, The Golden Compass, City of Ember, The Giver, The Host, and many others were completely ignored by paying customers.

Chaos Walking was not saved by Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, which underscored that the moment had long since passed by the time we entered the 2020s.