Failed Young Adult Media Adaptations

Small correction on the Mortal Instruments thing: they're only siblings because their parents separated when they were babies, the mom took the daughter, and the dad adopted a boy that would end up in love with his father's daughter, no blood relationship here. But the movie sucked anyway and changed so much about the book a sequel wouldn't have worked without even more changes.

As for Ender's Game, it didn't get sequels because it bombed at the box office, I personally liked the movie even if they rushed the plot so.

Wait, Alex Rider got a THEATRICAL release here in the USA? Did anyone see it in theaters??? I remember seeing the ads in my kids magazines but I don't know if any theaters around my parts even PLAYED it. I was big into those books back in like 2006 and had to rent the movie from Blockbuster later XD  It was...okay, I think? Was there ever a new adaptation?
I forgot there even WAS a third Maze Runner movie O__o
Oh yeah, Cassandra Clare was part of the whole Miss Scribe/Harry Potter fanfic debacle, I had no idea she was such a contentious figure. I never saw the movie but I enjoyed the book well enough, don't think I finished the series. Was this series revived into a new adaptation eventually?

I mean, yeah, if you don't bother promoting the movie at all and only release it on 221 screens in a nation of 300 million+ moviegoers, what do you expect? I get that indie movies" can sometimes take off on their own through word of mouth, very positive fan reception, fan screenings, etc. BUT while the Alex Rider series I'm sure sold OK in the USA, it's just not a Harry Potter level of popularity, and couldn't squeak by on name brand alone. I don't see it as some type of tax write off for the company either, since the Weinstein Company didn't make it.

In fact, I wonder if that's one of the problems with adapting YA literature, that studios just expect Harry Potter or Twilight levels of money right off the bat when other series don't have that same level of BOOK popularity. Like those were already national, if not global, PHENOMENOMS prior to the movies, series like Alex Rider? NO. Yeah, I can see why no sequel was made, would be interested if any scripts floated around, especially since Horowitz himself has been a screenwriter.

How about I Am Number Four, which also had the same actor as the original Stormbreaker movie?

The Looking Glass Wars-I mean the American McGee Alice TV/movie/short film/ adaptation STILL hasn't come out after 15+ years of discussion, and Disney already hopped in that "wartime Wonderland" pot already, so not sure what they could do here. Would still love to see some concept art or a preliminary script though. 

Artemis Fowl had tons of potential between the sci-fi/Irish mythology/folklore elements AND it had the JK Rowling seal of approval, but yeah, the time to release that movie would have been 2005, not 2020.

Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events II-I know the format of the movie/Jim Carrey's take on Olaf were both controversial, but I felt like the spirit of the books was well captured. Brad Silbering still wanted to make a sequel, but I believe that Paramount Leadership changes along with the movie's "only modest" (AKA NOT HARRY POTTER) box office returns meant that Paramount hesitated. The kids aged out and the film was quietly canceled. Not sure if any scripts or concept art floating around, I was big on book forums at the time and never noticed any official or unofficial news about a sequel.

Blood and Chocolate was actually pretty solid, better then fucking Twilight that's for sure.

I thought the Hatchet film was perfectly fine, having read those books I can see why the others didn't get adapted into films as some people(myself included) didn't like the later direction they took showing that Brian is only able to find true happiness living in the wild, that whole anti-civilization message(or whatever the hell it was) just didn't work for me and I can't say i'm too bummed about not being able to see that on the small screen.

The White Fang books on the other hand got like three movies made somehow.

There certainly was, one of my classes in elementary school watched it as Hatchet was one of the books we were assigned to read, it was the first time a book we were assigned to read that I actually liked got a film, as usually it was the books I hated having to read that got film adaptations(I.E. Tuck Everlasting, The Giver, Bridge to Terabithia, sorry to fans of the latter but I always felt like the whole killing off Lesie thing was just a really poor attempt at being shocking for the sake of it and I was actually hoping the film would deviate from the novel quite a bit so a prominent female character didn't get needlessly fridged but alas no luck there). You can watch the film on Youtube here(not to be confused with the 2006 slasher film of the same name BTW LOL which actually did get several sequels) i enjoyed it, though Gary Paulson said it didn't do the book justice and said he would never allowed one of his films to be made into a movie again: 

The Blood and Chocolate film actually came out in 2007, a whole year before the first Twilight movie, so it wasn't done as a response, maybe if it had come out after the first film it would've been a hit.

It's not a great film but it's from Twilight levels of awful, it's perfectly fine, though i've never read the books so I was judging the film strictly on it's own merits as opposed to how faithful it was to the book. Same deal with the Percy Jackson films, I know the author hated them and is glad to be personally involved with the TV show, but I personally thought the films were decent enough and i'm still bummed we aren't getting a third movie as Sea of Monsters ended on a blatant sequel hook.

The Hunger games films are probably the best young-adult film adaptations out there.

Host was better then Twilight in that it was merely average as opposed to being godawful, but the only reason most people remember that film as the fact that it was one of the last movies Roger Ebert reviewed before his death from cancer in 2013(it wasn't the last movie he reviewed thank fuck, his actual final review was To the Wonder, which was a much more fitting note to end his life on).

Lastly the Goosebumps movies were pretty solid and really showed that Jack Black had some genuine acting range(I also liked that made-for-tv movie that featured Lindsay Lohan's younger sister Ali)

Moviebob actually did an interesting video on a few years back on this trend