Young adult sensation 'The Mortal Instruments' gets a trailer
Can Lily Collins and Harald Zwart make this the new 'Twilight'?
Lily Collins either needs to wash her hand or she's part of a long tradition of magical super-beings in 'The Mortal Instruments,' and I'm not sure which.
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I have not read "The Mortal Instruments," mainly because there are only so many hours in the day and there are now roughly 100,000 different Young Adult series that deal with romance and the supernatural, and I have to sleep and eat occasionally.
Screen Gems is gambling on this as a new franchise that can put them into the same sort of business that Summit has so beautifully managed over the last few years with the "Twilight" franchise and which every studio in town has been chasing as hard as possible. Lionsgate managed to pull it off with "The Hunger Games," but there are plenty of examples of where it's gone wrong, the cinema landscape littered with the corpses of "City Of Ember," "The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising," "Eragon," and more. At first glance, I'm not sure what sets "The Mortal Instruments" apart. It looks like a riff on "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," with Lily Collins starring as Clary Fray, a girl who learns that she is not a mortal, but is instead a powerful being born to hunt and kill demons on Earth.
With a supporting cast including Lena Heady, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jared Harris, and Kevin Durand, this looks like a Screen Gems movie through and through. That's probably great news if you're a huge fan of the "Underworld" and "Resident Evil" movies. Harald Zwart is a guy who's been at this for a while now, and while earlier films like "One Night At McCool's" and "Agent Cody Banks" were less than noteworthy, he seems to have made the best of a bad situation with his remake of "The Karate Kid." This is Sony's thank you to him for making that a hit, and I'm curious to see how he handles the picture. He could either break through to the A-list with this one or end up back in the same place he was when he made "The Pink Panther 2."
Check it out and see which way you think it's going to go:
And for those of you who are big fans of the books, let me know what it is that makes these special. I'm genuinely curious, since I'm not sure the trailer makes the case persuasively.
"The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones" opens August 23, 2013.
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Login or create a HitFix account Login SignupCash Bailey
November 16, 2012 at 7:31PM EST Reply to CommentYeah, looks like another one of those. TWILIGHT meets PERCY JACKSON.
Speaking of failed franchises I would be interested in seeing a director's cut of THE GOLDEN COMPASS.
That movie was a mess but had some good stuff in it. Maybe someday we can see the original version that New Line gutted.
drew "The Golden Compass" and "Inkheart" are two more great examples of the not-so-successful version of this type of thing right now.
November 17, 2012 at 5:12AM ESTDKT
November 16, 2012 at 8:49PM EST Reply to CommentHaven't read it yet, but I'll probably do so soon. This looks fun to me.
And if it's a call between this and Beautiful Creatures, this looks waaaaaaaaaay more entertaining to me.
Leah
November 16, 2012 at 8:50PM EST Reply to CommentOkay, embarrassing, but my first encounter with the author Cassadra Clare was around '00 when she wrote Harry Potter fan fiction. So, when she came to Ann Arbor for a book signing of City of Bones, I went. I read the first trilogy - I now have two little kids and there is no time nor too much interest to read the others.
I've always liked Clare's characters - they seem broken enough to be interesting. Her world is constantly mixed with the "real" world. Although I wish she wrote everything a bit scarier. Buffy is a good comparison (author is a huge fan) - City of Bones is not as funny but it is humerous at times. The trilogy is fine - entertaining but not mind blowing IMHO.
drew Not only a detailed response, but a completely reasonable one as well. Thanks, Leah.
November 17, 2012 at 5:12AM ESTShoumik
November 16, 2012 at 10:04PM EST Reply to CommentIs it too much to hope that this will be the Young Adult version of Frailty?
Ashley
November 17, 2012 at 1:30AM EST Reply to CommentNot sure that it IS special, given that The Mortal Instruments (like 50 Shades of Gray) is reworked fanfiction (in this case, Cassandra Clare's Harry Potter fanfiction), and there are a lot of holdovers in character types and such from both the fanfic and HP.
drew Interesting. When I wrote my piece on "The Age Of Fan-Fiction" last year, I had no idea we were actually seeing fan-fiction authors break through into mainstream imitations of the things they loved. Fascinating.
November 17, 2012 at 5:13AM ESTCash Bailey I recall reading that the author of those abysmal FIFTY SHADES OF GREY books started out writing TWILIGHT fan-fiction.
November 17, 2012 at 5:13PM ESTWhether that's true or not I don't know, but it sounds perfect.
Kaeper
November 17, 2012 at 6:13AM EST Reply to CommentIt's not a bad series of books. Not great but an enjoyable read nonetheless. The characters have a reasonable degree of complexity for the genre. This *could* be okay but as with any novel to film, it all depends how they hack it down to a two hour script.
James
November 17, 2012 at 3:43PM EST Reply to CommentYou should read up on the author, Drew. Not only is this re-worked Harry Potter fanfiction, but her fanfic career ended ingloriously with plagiarism accusations. (If it resembles Buffy to you, that's because Buffy is one of the sources she cribbed from.)
Megalodon
November 17, 2012 at 4:11PM EST Reply to CommentIt would have been nice to see a single original idea, or character, or setting in this entire thing, but nope. Everything looks directly cherrypicked from what's come before. (Apparently, there is reason for this.) And I'm basing this on nothing but what's on this site page, since before now, I'd never heard of this author or this book series or this movie. So there's your outsider's opinion.
ungruntled So it's perfect for Hollywood, then.
November 19, 2012 at 2:52PM ESTfoundnemo
November 18, 2012 at 10:44AM EST Reply to CommentWhat makes these special? Drew, I would direct you to your great article from last year, "The Bigger Picture: Muppets, Avengers, and Life in the Age of Fanfiction" . What makes this special is how very nicely this film slots into your thesis. I enjoyed that article immensely when you wrote it and it has only continued to be relevant. Definitely popped into my mind when I heard of the Star Wars acquisition and of the pick up of Arndt, a man who for a living has dissected the Hero's Journey innards as well the over-earnest Star Wars fanficcer would that I am sure he secretly is. Indeed the age of fanfiction. Some artifacts of it just more apparent than most - exhibit A, Mortal Instruments and cousin Shades of Grey.