![]() Related: Hunger Games: Every Major Difference Between the Movies & Books Then again, Bay had enjoyed modest success (creatively speaking) blending teen romance with sci-fi action a couple years before I Am Number Four entered development on the first live-action Transformers film, so one can more or less grasp what DreamWorks was thinking early on. Admittedly, it's a little bizarre to imagine the guy whose movies are known for being utterly bombastic helming a project that plays out as a fairly quiet boy-meets-girl story set in high school (with a sci-fi twist) for a significant part of its runtime. Upon landing the right to I Am Number Four, DreamWorks began developing the film with an eye on having Michael Bay direct. For a movie that basically amounts to a cross between a teen romance and sci-fi action flick, I Am Number Four is needlessly complicated by all the table-setting it does for a franchise that was never guaranteed to happen. There are also big subplots intentionally left dangling or unresolved by the end of I Am Number Four, most notably the one involving Sam, an outsider at the high school where Number Four hides in Paradise, Ohio, whose conspiracy theorist father disappeared while he was searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life on earth. The film is similarly loaded with plot devices (like the fantastical other-worldly artifacts used by the Mogadorians and Lorics) that aren't fully explained or were seemingly included so they could play a more important role in the followups. In fact, much of what the audience needs to know for this movie (the Mogadorians are bad and hunting Number Four's kind) is quickly established by the wordless opening scene, which shows Number Three being caught and killed. A lot of it's unimportant to the story at hand and only really serves to lay the groundwork for potential sequels. Unfortunately, I Am Number Four too often resorts to exposition dumps or ham-fisted expository conversations to explain Number Four's backstory and its mythology. Verbal exposition, whether it's presented as spoken dialogue or delivered through voiceover narration, is something screenwriters are generally advised to avoid as much as possible since it inherently violates the 'Show, don't tell" rule of what makes for good visual storytelling in film. So, how did I Am Number Four veer off course? ![]() Combined with the middling to negative reviews from critics, there clearly wasn't much interest in a franchise and plans to adapt the remainder of the Lorien Legacies were canceled. The film was far from a bomb, but only took in $150 million (including, $55 million in the U.S.) on a $50 million budget, or not even half of what Twilight had done. However, things didn't work out in the end. Related: Why Young Adult Movie Franchises Aren't Successful Anymoreĭisney, which distributed the movie through its Touchstone Pictures label, went all out on promoting I Am Number Four to teenagers, including hosting a synergistic cast tour with Hot Topic in the build-up to its release in February 2011. ![]() ![]() All nine are being hunted by the Lorics' enemy, the Mogadorians, but can only be killed in sequence (starting with Number One), which is why Number Four hides on earth from the others with only his guardian Henri to protect him until he comes of age. The first installment in a seven-part YA sci-fi series known as the Lorien Legacies, I Am Number Four revolves around Number Four, the member of the Loric alien species from the planet Lorien, who is so-named because he's one of nine members of a special group of young Lorics (known as the Garde) that posses unusual super-abilities. Abrams to secure the film rights to Pittacus Lore's (the pseudonym used by writers James Frey and Jobie Hughes) novel I Am Number Four in June 2009, more than a year before it was published in August 2010. Hoping to cash-in on the then-new YA craze, DreamWorks beat out J.J.
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