Fox Gets Ugly

Now that they're about to get Eragon off the ground (it's due to be released in December), Fox is looking for another teen trilogy that could potentially bring them the piles of money they so crave. According to Variety this morning, the studio went in a very different direction with young-adult series two: They've acquired the rights to a trilogy of books by Scott Westerfeld, the first of which, Uglies, already has producers attached.

Uglies, and its sequels Pretties and Specials (I know the names sounds dumb right now, but when you hear the plot you will feel soooo bad for giggling), are set in a future-world in which "Kids are called 'Uglies' until they reach 16 and get surgically transformed into the attractive 'Pretties,' who move to the glamorous part of town." Um, yeah. Could that be any more disturbing? Needless to say, the series is eaten up by teens who probably dream of a world in which they'll get to be turned into Pretties and hang with the cool kids, so the movies would have a built-in audience. Personally, I think the whole thing sounds so horrifying and sad that I'm not sure I could bring myself to see the movies. But then, I'm way weaker than most teenagers.