The Heist Society Movie (aging the characters up)

Hey everybody!

I come to you today with a very long, very overdue post on what I’m sure will be a very hot button issue: the Heist Society movie.  Specifically, the fact that Warner Brothers has planned to age Kat and her crew up from their teens to their early twenties for the movie adaptation.

Since news of the option broke back in February, much as been said and theorized about this point, and I’ve been meaning to write on this subject for a while, but I haven’t had the time to really put my thoughts together until now.  So here goes:

First, it’s important that everyone knows that I knew this was a possibility from the very beginning.  And I mean the very beginning.  In fact, one of the the first conversations I had with my film agent (Sarah Self) about Heist included the following exchange:

“What do you think about aging the characters up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean instead of Kat getting kicked out of boarding school she’s getting kicked out of college.”

The conversation was longer, obviously, but that was the core of it.

At first, I had the same reaction many of you probably had: but the heist is only cool because they’re teens!

But then I got to thinking about it—I mean really thinking about it—and the more I did, the more the idea really grew on me for both practical and artistic reasons.

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The practical reasons for doing it:

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Reason #1: money
Now, this is probably the main reason the filmmakers are going this direction, so let’s address it first:  Money.

With very few exceptions, in order for a movie to get a big budget it has to have big stars.  This makes a major difference, budget-wise, star power-wise, and just about everything else.

Basically, it’s the difference between filming on a sound stage and pretending it’s Paris…

And filming in Paris!

From the get-go we all agreed that to do this movie really well they would need a big budget.

And big budgets require movie stars.

But what about teen movie stars? you might be saying.  Well, that brings us to…

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Reason #2: talent pool
So much of this movie will rest on the shoulders of the cast.  If we don’t have the right Kat or Hale then…well…forget it.  It won’t work.  And there are 2-3 teen actresses working today who can maybe headline a major motion picture.  And maybe one of them might make the right Kat…maybe.  And that’s a big, big risk.

But…if we age Kat into her 20s, then the list of potential actresses doubles or triples.

Now, I’m not saying teen actresses couldn’t do a wonderful job, but aging the characters up increases the talent pool enough that we have a far better chance of finding the right Kat.

(And I for one would rather have an actress who has Kat’s same spirit than someone who only has Kat’s same age.)

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Reason #3:  audience size
It’s a sad but true fact that teens and tweens will open their minds (and their wallets) to embrace movies, TV shows, etc. that feature slightly older characters, but the same cannot be said of grownups.

Just by adding a few years to Kat’s age we could double or triple the number of people who might be interested in seeing the movie.  That is why they can justify having a larger budget and making a “bigger”, “blockbuster”-type movie—because there are more people who might be willing to buy tickets.

That’s not to say, of course, that teen movies can’t come out and do big business.  But it’s important to note that the Twilight movie was huge because the Twilight books were even bigger.  (Same with Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and almost every other example I can think of.)  Heist was a brand new book with no track record—not even close to the three examples above.

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Those were all the reasons why the studio might want to age the characters up and I can understand each and every one.  But those reasons alone weren’t enough to get me to sign on to the idea—not even close.

I thought and prayed and worried a lot about this very issue because, while Warner Brothers was very open about their plans to age the characters up, other studios were saying that they wanted to keep the crew in their teens, so this was a major part of my decision about who would get the rights.

In the end, I finally came to the following conclusions about why I don’t necessarily mind it.

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My reasons for agreeing:

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Reason #1:  Is it really only cool because they’re teens?  Really?
Something my friend Jennifer Lynn Barnes and I talk about all the time is how people who aren’t familiar with writing for teens frequently consider age to be a character trait and how we don’t agree with that—not at all.  The fact that you’re a teenager might be one aspect of who you are but it isn’t the defining factor.

Age is not character.  Character is not age.

Is Kat any less smart if she’s 22 instead of 15?  Any less headstrong or gutsy?  Is it any less groundbreaking that she’s leading her own crew in a family that is completely in every way dominated by men?

Maybe a little.  But not much.

Sure, you do lose some of the “wise beyond her years” or “too young to be so jaded” aspects of her character, but that’s really a matter of degrees because I know it might not seem that way to many of you right now, but 22 is still young.  Crazy young.  And a super cynical/ super jaded 22-year-old is still an interesting character the way I see it.

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Reason #2:  Would you even know?
With the exception of Kat’s hearing at the beginning of the novel, not a single scene takes place in school or in any other place that is the sole domain of teenagers.  It’s just not a “teen” novel in that sense.  (And the plan right now—as far as I know—is to keep that scene and just have her getting kicked out of college or law school or the like.)

Most of the actors and actresses on TV are played by actors in their 20s, so the cast here won’t even look that different from what we’re used to seeing.

I honestly think that if that’s the only change (and it won’t be, but go with me here) then most people wouldn’t have even registered the “aging up”.  I really think it’s possible to make a movie where that’s a change that the vast majority of readers/viewers don’t even notice.

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Reason #3:  Kat’s been gone longer.
One of the problems that we faced with the book was that Kat was only able to be gone a few months before getting jerked back into the business.  That was a limiting factor of the setup of the world that she really couldn’t be gone much longer.

But if she’s older, she could have been gone longer.  Gotten rustier.  Grown more out-of-touch.  And, frankly, I think those things will make the film stronger.

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Reason #4:  People still seeing a 20-something Kat as a little girl hurts deeper.
If I had one major hesitation about aging them up it was that Kat might lose her superpower—that fact that everyone looks at her and sees a little girl.  Underestimates her.  Coddles her.  Doesn’t take her seriously.

But then I realized that people do underestimate young women—they do it all the time.  And it’s not something that mysteriously stops when a person turns 21.  In fact, the older you get the more you come to realize it and the more it hurts.

Also, I think people still see you as you were the last time you saw them.  Friends you haven’t seen in ages will ask you about stuff that hasn’t interested you in years.  Long-lost relatives will assume you only drink grape soda or are afraid of the dark just because that was true ten years ago when they saw you last.

Kat is going to be running her first crew and masterminding her first job no matter how old she technically is. So what will Uncle Eddie see when a twenty-something-Kat walks into his kitchen?  My guess: he’ll see the teen-something-Kat who walked out.

Because that’s what everyone sees.

And that ups the awesome in any movie!

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Reason #5: Things will change.
When Hollywood adapts a book into a film they do just that—adapt.  It’s like throwing an animal or an organism into a new environment: it must change or die.

Why?  Because books and movies are two different things.

In the book, we can be in Kat’s head, hear her thoughts, feel her feelings.  In the movie, we are observers—nothing more, nothing less.

This is why movie versions of books will always have changes.  Always.  The key is to make decisions that will make the BEST movie—not the movie that is the closest to being a line-by-line retelling of the book.

After all, if you want to read the book you can.  It’s right there.  The books aren’t going anywhere.

I know that I could have gone with a number of wonderful studios and incredibly-talented producers who would have kept the cast in their teens.  I also know that it’s very possible (even likely) that those studios would have made a movie that bore even less resemblance to the book.

Why?  Because things will change.

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The most important thing that I want each of you to take away from this is that I love that Kat and her crew are teens in the books.  I absolutely would NOT want to write these books as anything but young adult novels.  That’s the decision that I think makes for the best books.

But movies and novels are different.  They just are.  And for the reasons given in this post, I thought this was the right decision to make the best movie.

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ps: the usual disclaimers

–I don’t have any information about casting.  If I do (and it’s a tremendously big if) I will post it here.

–If you have questions about the LYKY movie, go here and read all about it.

–All I know about the Heist Society movie is that Shauna is hard at work on the screenplay.  That’s where it starts.  If the studio likes the script they might start attaching directors, actors, and so on, but nothing–I mean nothing–is set in stone at the moment, and Hollywood options a lot of stuff it never makes so none of us should be holding our breathes on this one.

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