Move Over, "Twilight," There’s a New "Game" in Town!

By now even Mongolian herdmen living in felt tents have probably heard of the Twilight saga. Would you believe there is something on the horizon that promises to be just as big, if not even bigger, than the well-known Stephenie Meyer series?

On March 23, Lionsgate Entertainment releases The Hunger Games, a dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie based on Suzanne Collins’s book trilogy of the same name.

The books (which include The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay) are set in America following a great war. The United States no longer exists, and the characters live in the fictional nation of Panem. Panem is divided not into states, but twelve distinct districts.

Every year, as per tradition, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are randomly selected from each district to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a brutal fight to the death which is nationally televised live for all to see. The trilogy follows heroine Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers for the Games to save her younger sister, Primrose, after she is selected to compete.

Thanks to the Twilight books and movies, literature for teens and young adults has been on a tremendous upswing in the last few years. And, like teens themselves, they follow the trends. After Twilight’s release, paranormal romances ruled the bookshelves during the mid to late 2000’s and appealed not just to teenagers, but to parents and older adults as well.

Now, we have Suzanne Collins to thank for the shift to dystopian fiction. Since The Hunger Games was released in 2008, there has been a large boom in books considered to be dystopian (set in a corrupt or repressed world under the guise of perfection) and post-apocalyptic (set after a catastrophic event threatens the end of mankind).

No one can say for certain why The Hunger Games is suddenly the new Twilight. Maybe it’s the marketing, maybe it’s the heavy teen appeal, or maybe it’s the action and suspense. The one thing we can say for certain is that the numbers don’t lie. There are over 23 million books from the trilogy in print and it has been translated into 26 different languages.

Advanced ticket sales for the film began on February 22 and shattered previous pre-sale records. Fandango.com, a popular online movie ticket seller, reported they hadn’t seen such high pre-ticket sales since tickets for Eclipse (the third movie in the Twilight saga) were released in May 2010. Companion books and movie guides are already making the rounds, and fans are clamoring for even the slightest glimpse at a new trailer or scene from the movie. I’m sure we can expect to see much more of this in the future, as The Hunger Games is a planned four-movie saga. Filming for the second movie, Catching Fire will start filming in July and has an expected release date of November 2013.

So what can we expect to see after the movie is released on March 23? We’ve already seen The Hunger Games and its sequels fly off the shelves, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other dystopian and post apocalyptic titles get a boost in popularity as well.

If you’d like to read other young adult books similar to Suzanne Collins’s action packed series, try Divergent by Veronica Roth. Divergent is very reminiscent of The Hunger Games and features teenagers who have to decide which faction, or societal group, they want to be a part of when they turn 16. Everything comes crashing down when word gets out of political upheaval among the factions. Epitaph Road by David Patneaude is another promising dystopia, set during a time when a virus has wiped out 97% of the male population, leaving females to reign supreme. You could also take a look at Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick, a post-apocalyptic adventure in which an electromagnetic pulse kills more than half the world’s population, leaves older generations unaffected, and turns the rest into cannibalistic zombies.

If you’d like to read dystopian novels that are more character focused, take a look at Wither by Lauren DeStefano, which chronicles characters in a world in which a deadly disease kills all females by age 20 and males by age 25.  The result of such a world is polygamous marriages and black market wives to try to continue the world’s population before it’s too late. Another title to try would be Delirium by Lauren Oliver, in which love is a disease and members of society are “cured” at age 18, or Matched by Ally Condie, set in a civilization where society Officials decide who you should love and pick your perfect match.

So will you get caught up in the Hunger Games madness? I know I did, and I have my advanced ticket for the midnight showing to prove it!