Fox said no to 'Delirium' TV series
I've got one seriously upset teenager on my hands right now. One of my nieces just learned that her favorite YA book, Delirium, won't be made into a Fox TV series, after all. Oh, the horror! Really though, I forgot just how loud a teenage girl can actually wail. Yikes.
And she's not alone: Fans of the Lauren Oliver books Delirium, Pandemonium and Requiem are no doubt in agony right now, with the news that FOX has opted not to pick up the TV show pilot based on the story. Personally? I wasn't nuts about the trilogy, but I can see the appeal to a 15-year-old girl.
So why, with Delirium being so popular, did Fox opt out? After all, fans were so rabid about the potential new TV show that they took to Twitter, begging the network to pick the show up. We've seen this kind of fandom before, and it does bode well for the future of a show, does it not?
When my niece finally stopped having her (forgive me here) delirious breakdown, I asked her: Why? Why would a network decide to pull the plug on a teen dystopian show starring none other than Emma Roberts? That's when she unloaded. I'm doing my best to, ahem, paraphrase here, but basically, the teen sayeth:
"Emma Roberts as Lena was a bad idea. She sucks. Everything sucks."
So there you go. Teen analysis: You just can't beat it. Seriously though, there were questions raised about the decision to cast Roberts as Lena Haloway, a young woman living in Portland, Maine, where residents are being "cured" of love. Love, it seems, is a weakness, a disease - and it must be eliminated in order for everyone to function well in society. Lena's a happy-go-lucky girl, until she meets "Invalid" Alex and, you guessed it, falls in love. The Invalids, I have to clarify here, are those who refuse to take the cure for love. They live outside the city, in the "Wilds."
Look, I fully understand if you're rolling your eyes right now, but for some, the Delirium trilogy is an obsession, and the idea of a TV show based on those books was a dream come true.
I believe that Fox decided that possibly, dystopian teen fiction is all played out. Obviously I have no way of knowing for sure why the network execs walked away, but that's one possible reason. Another possibility: Fox did pick up several potentially promising dramas, including J.J. Abrams' latest pilot, Almost Human (a "robot cop drama"). Sometimes it's just not in the cards, and that seems to be the case for the Delirium pilot.
Another network could eventually pick up Delirium, could it not? I can definitely see a show like this playing extremely well on the CW and even ABC Family. I'm not going to mention this to the (still sniffling) niece, because I don't want to give her any false hope. Poor thing. I hate to say this, but I'm totally down with the robots and the cops...
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