As ‘Divergent’ Trends Downward, Hopes For Post-‘Hunger Games’ Dystopian Teen YA Franchises Look Dour

The blogosphere has written enough thinkpieces and features (ourselves included) about the YA movie/Teen Dystopia craze to know this trend went into overdrive right around 2012. While “Harry Potter” arguably launched the phenomenon of fantasy YA adaptations and the rabid millennial audience for it a few years earlier, 2012 became the peak YA year: “The Twilight Saga” was reaching its final installment and the inaugural “The Hunger Games” was just kicking off. In fact, as popular and noisy as “Twilight” was with tweens, it teed up its successor in a big way: the highest grossing film in the series, “New Moon,” peaked at $338 million domestically while the first ‘Hunger Games’ film exploded with an astonishing $442 million domestic gross, eclipsing every ‘Twilight’ film’s final domestic tally right out of the gate.

And while fantasy like “Harry Potter’ and romance fantasy like ‘Twilight’ helped launch the millennial thirst for teens in peril, its the particular future-dystopian...