3. The 5th Wave
Release Date: January 22, 2016 Yet another sci-fi book adaptation on the cards for this year is The 5th Wave, a film based on Rick Yanceys eponymous novel that follows Cassie Sullivan, a young woman searching for her little brother amidst an impending attack by a deadly alien force. In fact, this will be the 5th such attack (hence the 5th wave) with each previous wave proving deadlier than the last, leaving a decimated, helpless Earth on the verge of collapse. Sounds like nothing weve not seen before, granted, though with the ever-improving Chloe Grace Moretz cast as the lead opposite Liev Schreibers villain, there is every chance that this film could take us by surprise in the coming weeks after flying under the radar for so long. One thing we do know is that they intend to make the movie as big as possible, as the residents of downtown Macon, Georgia will confirm a planned explosion of a bus on set proved to be a little too powerful, destroying store fronts and putting out windows all along Cotton Avenue. The 5th Wave will be the first film of a planned trilogy, with Columbia Pictures picking up the rights to all three books in the series. While the Divergent and Maze Runner franchises have helped to saturate the dystopian teen market, the 5th Wave films are more likely to be mentioned alongside commercial successes like The Hunger Games, due in part to the popularity of the source material. In fact, USA Today are already regarding Rick Yancey's first novel as a classic:
"A modern sci-fi masterpiece, this compelling book the first in a series should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires as it brings outer-space entities to Earth for the sole purpose of complete annihilation of mankind. As much as it is an engaging look at humanity, it's also a page-turning rocket of popcorn-movie action."