Adapting Young Adult fiction seems to be all the rage these days, which is why Brad Pitt is making the hugely popular Illuminae into a movie. With the success of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner franchises, there's every chance Pitt's onto a winner with this already popular title. Having only been released in October, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff's story of a broken relationship between a teenage hacker and her fighter pilot ex-boyfriend already has a big audience.
The story's told via a dossier that comprises of all sorts of data, including texts, instant messages, casualty lists, and various classified files - think along the lines of the romanticism of Twilight mixed with the piecing together of accounts and evidence a la Max Brooks' World War Z (an adaptation Pitt incidentally starred in), and you'll be some way to grasping what Illuminae is about.
Pitt's production company Plan B were drawn to the manuscript early on and we can see why. There's certainly a lot of potential for Illuminae, especially after it shot to the top of the Young Adult Hardcover Bestsellers list within a week of release. As with Harry Potter and Twilight, if there's already devoted fans in place desperate to see these characters imagined on-screen, then there's surely big profits to be made. Now begins Pitt's search for a scriptwriter and, more importantly, the right actors.
