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The Darkest Minds Trailer & Poster: The Next YA Revolution Begins
20th Century Fox has released the first trailer and poster for The Darkest Minds, a movie adaptation of the YA sci-fi novels written by Alexandra Bracken. Fox itself is no stranger to YA genre literature adaptations, having previously brought series like The Maze Runner and the Percy Jackson books to the big screen. As it were, The Darkest Minds is arriving at a time when the YA sci-fi craze seems to have largely played out at the box office, following a string of under-performing installments like Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, The 5th Wave, and most notably The Divergent Series: Allegiant.
The Darkest Minds stars Amandla Stenberg – best known for her roles in the YA book adaptations The Hunger Games and Everything, Everything – as Ruby, a 16 year old girl living in a dystopian future where 98% of the world’s children were wiped out by a catastrophic disease, back when she was still a kid. Those that survived, like Ruby, subsequently developed super-human powers ranging from extreme intelligence to the ability to wield electricity or fire. Governments around the world thus agreed to detain these children in internment camps, in an attempt to maintain control over them and their abilities.
Fox’s trailer for The Darkest Minds, which you can watch in the space above, introduces both the premise and main characters in the film, but keeps its focus primarily on Ruby and her own experiences. The video nevertheless offers a quick look at the movie’s other three leads, in the forms of the electricity-wielding Zu (Miya Cech), the hyper-intelligent Chubs (Skylan Brooks), and the telekinetic Liam (Harris Dickinson), aka. Ruby’s love interest. Similar to the trailer, The Darkest Minds‘ poster (see below) embraces the spirit of teenagers rebelling against authority figures with its graffiti-style painted text.
Adapted for the screen by Chad Hodge (Wayward Pines) and directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2), The Darkest Minds also stars Mandy Moore (This Is Us) as Cate, a doctor who helps Ruby when the latter decides to escape from her internment camp and seek refuge with her fellow teens on the run. While she doesn’t appear in the trailer, Game of Thrones‘ own Gwendoline Christie further rounds out the movie’s cast as Lady Jane, the relentless bounty hunter tasked with tracking Ruby and the others down and bringing them in.
Given its “X-Men meets The Maze Runner” setup, The Darkest Minds unsurprisingly checks most of the typical boxes for the YA sci-fi subgenre, if the trailer is anything to judge by. At the same time, it does boast a welcome diverse lineup of talent on both sides of the camera, and is arriving at a time when YA adaptations could be on the verge of making a comeback at the box office, following the release of this month’s A Wrinkle in Time and Ready Player One. And of course, if the film is a hit, then there are already three other Darkest Minds books lined up and ready for Fox to adapt.
The Darkest Minds release date: Aug 3, 2018
