The cinematic saga Twilight has long been the envy of people. With nearly $400 million in revenue collected at the box office alone with its first film starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the concept quickly caught the eye of the studios. Also, the early 2010s saw many competitors try their luck with dystopian and Young Adult novels. And if there have been some successes (Hunger Games, Le Labyrinthe), there were also several misses (Divergent).
Warner Bros’ big project to compete Twilight
And on the side of failures, long before the horrible Uglies from Netflix, we could find Beautiful Creatures (Sublime Creatures in VF), produced by Warner Bros in 2013 and adapted from a literary saga imagined by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. However, the studio firmly believed in it at the time. In addition to ensuring a classic but strong concept, WB had recruited director Richard LaGravenese (PS I Love You) and assembled an impressive cast including Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Jeremy Irons (Watchmen), Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder), Emmy Rossum (Shameless) or Rachel Brosnahan (Mrs Maisel).
On the program for this film? The story takes place in Gatlin, a town in South Carolina (USA) where Ethan lives. As a young high school student, he begins to dream of a girl he has never met, until she appears one day in his life. Named Lena, this one seems to be destined for him. Yet while the two are made for each other, a curse that goes back generations puts their love to the test. What kind of curse? In Lena’s family, when one of the members reaches the age of 16, he is called to use his powers for Good or Evil, without being able to choose.
Beautiful Creatures was the first volume of a saga in four novels published between 2009 and 2012 under the title Caster Chronicles. In other words, even before the release of this adaptation, the story already had a significant fan base, which logically attracted Warner Bros. No luck, the theatrical release ultimately turned out to be a dismal failure with only 60 million dollars generatedwhich is as much as its budget. And we’re not even talking about its disastrous 48% rating sur Rotten Tomatoes…
A bitter failure
But then, why did this film fail so much despite all the positive ingredients to its credit? According to Digital Spy, there are two reasons for this. The first, the film would have taken several liberties with respect to the book. However, if these changes were minimal and completely validated by the authors, they would have been enough to outrage early fans and create bad word of mouth.
The second, Warner Bros would have opted for the worst marketing strategy when promoting this film, namely: aggressively oppose it Twilightto make it its most credible competitor. And inevitably, rather than attracting fans of Bella and Edward who could have been tempted by this new story, they took these attacks very badly and therefore boycotted this adaptation.
Also read: “This is why I canceled my account” – Netflix announces a series Twilight and that doesn’t please everyone
A failure that is difficult to accept for the studio which, as you will have understood, quickly preferred to turn the page to forget this poor performance. In fact, even though WB had initially shown interest in the idea of adapting the four books, the concept ultimately never went through to fruition.
Worse, as we can discover today, the film is not available on any streaming platform. To see it, you only have to go through VOD services… Lose it.
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