Is Fallen by Lauren Kate Doomed to Failure?
Hey, listen up — I really hope the title doesn’t turn out to be true. Fallen by Lauren Kate is my favorite book. It’s the one that opened the doors to writing for me when I was a teenager and introduced me to a world that brought me financial stability, freedom, and immense happiness as a reader. I was even lucky enough to exchange emails with the author and let me tell you, she’s incredibly kind and responds to all her readers.
Fallen tells the story of a young girl who has suffered a great tragedy. During a mysterious accident, her school crush dies in a terrible, unprecedented fire, and everyone believes she’s to blame. And why wouldn’t they? When asked what happened, she can only say that it was the shadows that have followed her since childhood.
From that moment on, she’s dragged from one courtroom to another until the justice system decides she should serve her sentence at a juvenile reform school called “Cross & Cross.” Once she arrives, strange things start happening — shadows chase her, and ghosts from her past try to take over her. But what torments her the most is that one of the boys seems eerily familiar, and she can’t understand why she feels so drawn to him.
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It’s a beautiful story, with five books in the original series and a sixth dedicated to one of the characters. I’ve been a fan of these books since I was thirteen, and although I don’t like to talk about age, let’s just say it’s been quite a few years since I first read the series. So, you can imagine my excitement when I first heard that the film rights had been acquired. My friends and I waited many years, and finally, in 2013, filming began with Addison Timlin and Jeremy Irvine, two fantastic actors. But that’s when Fallen’s curse began.
The world had to wait three more years for the movie’s release, but when it finally came out, it failed to succeed due to the lack of support from a major studio and being limited to on-demand screenings. I think it’s available on Netflix now, but very few people know about it. The movie is good, but I have to admit, the acting felt forced, and they revealed too many spoilers about what could happen in a potential sequel.
As the years went by, hope dwindled, until in 2021, a piece of news popped up on my Instagram: a production company had acquired the rights to turn it into a TV series. I haven’t followed the filming process much since there wasn’t a lot of information available, but I did find out that the main roles were cast with Jessica Alexander (The Little Mermaid), Gijs Blom (Jongens), and Timothy Innes (The Favourite). Hope rekindled among the Fallenatics.
This time, the series was produced by Silver Reel and Night Train Media for Globoplay. So far, it has premiered in Switzerland and Greece, but there are no release dates yet for the United States or Latin America (except Brazil). We’re hoping that good distributors get interested in the series because based on the trailers we’ve seen, the story seems slightly different from the books but still very intriguing. The visual quality and special effects look great too.
Let’s hope that this second chance is the one that sticks and that we won’t have to wait for a third attempt because these books deserve more recognition. Not only because the story of fallen angels is original, but also because of the incredible work and research the author put into writing them. And most importantly, they deserve recognition because of the immense love fans have for the story — for how it changed our lives for the better. It helped me discover who I truly am and gave me a purpose in life.
