For all you Maximum Ride fans, here’s some news! The rights to this popular series from James Patterson was bought by Collective Digital Studio to be turned into, not a big screen feature film, but a YouTube miniseries.
That’s not saying that a movie adaptation wasn’t attempted before:
Columbia Pictures acquired film rights to “Maximum Ride” in 2008, before the project moved to Universal Pictures. However, a Universal rep said “Maximum Ride” is no longer in development at the studio.
With the film project in limbo, CDS and Patterson are aiming for a faster time-to-market with the YouTube series – hoping to tap into the zeitgeist that have boosted other YA properties like “The Hunger Games” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” while catering to youth-skewing online audiences.
“‘Maximum Ride’ has a massive global fan base and it is very exciting to think about connecting with them online,” Patterson said in a statement. I’m confident that CDS will help introduce the book series to a completely new audience as well.”
But with how popular online videos are, especially with the target audience, this may be a prime way to reach out to its fans in a way that hasn’t really been attempted before. And with how easily it would be for the audience to watch it online (YouTube is free), it would be easy to grab new viewers, and potential new readers as well.
Let us know what you think? Do you think this is a brilliant way of producing a series based on a book, or do you think Patterson should’ve opted to option the rights to another big studio?
via Variety.