Young adult dystopian movies are making a comeback. With the upcoming film The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it seems fans of the once-popular genre are about to experience a new group of movies based on their favorite series. While The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is based on the prequel novel to The Hunger Games trilogy, another series is getting the adaptation treatment. Netflix is adapting the Scott Westerfeld book Uglies, a story about a young teen fighting against a government just as controlling with its citizens as the Capitol is in The Hunger Games.
Netflix picked up the rights to adapt the film in 2020, with Deadline announcing the film as a partnership between the streaming giant and Joey King. King is slotted to both star in the project and serve as an executive producer, with McG, known for his work on Charlie's Angels and Netflix's The Babysitter, set to direct. The screenplay was written by Jacob Forman (The Last Survivors), Vanessa Taylor (Divergent, The Shape of Water), and Whit Anderson (Ozark).
What can fans of book adaptations or dystopian movies expect? Here's everything we know about Uglies so far.
Uglies: The Plot
The book follows Tally Youngblood, an almost sixteen-year-old, as she prepares to move into the next chapter of her life. Her best friend Peris has already started that next chapter, having an operation to make him a Pretty in the society they live in. However, you're only eligible for the operation after you turn sixteen, meaning Tally has to wait three months until she can join him in New Pretty Town and have her operation.
Related: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Cast: Other Roles You've Seen the Actors Play
However, there's a snag in her journey to becoming a Pretty. After making friends with Shay, another teen with the same birthday as Tally, she is forced to travel outside society and find where Shay has run off to. Shay doesn't want to become Pretty, so she runs away to a place called the Smoke. She leaves Tally instructions on how to get there if she decides to follow her new friend. A government member, Dr. Cable, knows this and sends Tally to the Smoke with an ultimatum: find the Smoke or risk never becoming a Pretty.
After a treacherous journey, Tally finds the Smoke and her new friend, but her life will forever change after meeting new people and learning new information that permanently changes how she views the society she grew up in.
As a book adaptation, the movie will likely cover a significant portion of its source material. However, how close it will keep to the book, or what it will exclude, remains to be seen since very little information is available about the project.
Uglies: The Cast
Joey King stars as Tally Youngblood, the main female character who wants to be a Pretty, even if it comes at a cost. King is well-known for her roles in Netflix's teen romantic comedy trilogy The Kissing Booth, Hulu's The Princess, and Bullet Train. She also had roles in horror films like Wish Upon, The Conjuring, and Slender Man. Other lead cast members include Chase Stokes (Outer Banks), Brianne Tju (47 Meters Down: Uncaged, Light as a Feather), Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black, Inventing Anna), and Keith Powers (The Tomorrow War, Door Mouse).
Related: Why Hulu’s The Princess Is a Celebration of Feminism
As listed on IMDb, additional cast members include Alex D. Jennings (Stranger Things, Do Revenge), Kelly Gale (Plane), Jillian Murray (A Brush with Christmas), Kevin Miles (Jake from the State Farm commercials), Jan Luis Castellanos (13 Reasons Why, Tall Girl 2), Dutch Johnson (The Swarm, Veep), Charmin Lee (Doom Patrol), Lindsay Rootare (Do Revenge), Robert Palmer Watkins (The Walking Dead: World Beyond), Quintin Mims (Bel-Air), and Gabriella Garcia (Sweet Magnolias).
Release Date
There is no confirmed release date for Uglies at this time, though the film is expected to be released sometime in 2023.
Everything Else We Know
King is a big fan of the books, telling Deadline that she "was 11-years-old when [she] fell [sic] in love with the books.” She has been hoping to get the project off the ground for a while, as detailed in an interview with Collider.
“I’ve been trying to get this movie made for years, too. I’m obsessed. I was trying to obtain the book rights for so long and they were just always not available, so then I got ‘em! I got ‘em and then I said, ‘Hey Netflix, do you want to make this with me?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah!’ [Laughs] And it took a very long time to get that off the ground and I’m really lucky.”
The actress also isn't concerned about how well the movie does, though that will inevitably make or break if the rest of the series gets the film treatment. Instead, King is only concerned about how "special" the project is to her.
"This one was a dream for so long and it happened, and I don’t care if the movie does amazingly or not amazingly, I’ll never ever forget how special it was for me to make that.”
While there haven't been any trailers or teasers released, King is proud of what they've made. "[The footage] was zero effects, zero coloring, zero special effects edited in, and it made my heart skip a beat," she described to Collider. Here's to hoping we see some footage and a release date announcement soon.
