Why The I Am Number Four Franchise Was Canceled

Adapting young adult fiction has been a reliable approach for Hollywood, especially in a post-"Twilight" world. That stupid lightning in a bottle phenomenon gave rise to multiple imitators, whether it was books or adaptations of those books — some of which were more successful than others. 2011's "I Am Number Four" was one of the less successful examples.

Directed by D.J. Caruso ("Disturbia," "Eagle Eye"), the science-fiction action film was based on the 2010 novel of the same name. The book itself was written by Pittacus Lore (a collective pseudonym for authors James Frey and Jobie Hughes) and represented the inaugural Lorien Legacies novel in what is a seven-novel series that has also produced multiple spin-off and sequel series. Even before the book eventually became a hit, though, a bidding war had erupted for the film rights. In June 2009, J. J. Abrams faced off against Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay for a shot at adapting the property, with the latter winning out in the end. HarperCollins won the book rights soon after, and "l Am Number Four" spent seven weeks at number one on the children's New York Times bestseller list.

With that kind of success for the first book in the series, you might have expected the film to be a near "Twilight"-level hit. Put simply, it wasn't. The movie didn't do too badly in terms of box office returns, but it was savaged by critics. And while the books continued to arrive after that, the films ended after just one entry. So, what exactly prevented DreamWorks and Disney from pumping out a sequel if the box office for the first movie wasn't all that bad? Well, it's complicated.

"I Am Number Four" stars Alex Pettyfer as John Smith, a teenage alien from the planet Lorien who was sent to Earth as a child alongside eight others of his kind. Collectively known as the Garde, Smith and his fellow aliens made the trip across the universe to escape the invading Mogadorians, a nefarious race of aliens who are now hunting the Garde on Earth. John is watched over by his guardian, Cêpan or Henri (Timothy Olyphant), with the pair forced to constantly change their identities and move across the United States to escape their pursuers. After they move to a small Ohio town, John finds love in the form of amateur photographer Sarah Hart (Dianna Agron) and plenty of teenage angst and melodrama ensues. But he also manages to team up with a fellow Garde member to finally face off against the Mogadorians. The end of the film sees Smith, his new friends, and fellow alien Number 6 (Teresa Palmer) defeat the Mogadorian contingent sent to kill them before the locations of the remaining Garde members are revealed. Smith then sets off with his new cohorts to find them and start preparing for more Mogadorian showdowns, setting up a sequel to the movie that never materialized.

"I Am Number Four" was released on February 18, 2011, and was a modest box office hit, grossing $149.9 million on a $60 million budget. Sadly, the critical response was not quite as good. The film currently bears a 32% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the positive reviews that make up this lowly percentage really aren't all that great. Anthony Quinn of the Independent wasn't at all impressed with the film's "slavish adherence to formula," while the Washington Post's Sean O'Connell lamented the "Abercrombie & Fitch" casting and the characters being "about as thin as the pages in that Gen-Y fashion Bible." Perhaps most withering was Lisa Schwarzbaum over at Entertainment Weekly, who summarized the movie as "witless, insultingly derivative, muddy-looking, and edited in the hammering epileptic style that marks so many films produced, as this one is, by Michael Bay." Not one of the best YA adaptations you'll ever see, then.

Based on those appraisals, it might not be all that surprising that plans for a sequel were shelved. But this is Hollywood, where as long as something makes money, it will usually return in some form or fashion. So, when it was officially confirmed that there would be no more installments in the "I Am Number Four" franchise, fans might have been somewhat perplexed. The same year that "I Am Number Four" debuted, co-writer Marti Noxon spoke to Collider (via Yahoo!) about a potential sequel to the movie, saying:

"I think that that's on the back burner. The last I heard, they were shelving that idea for now. But, you never know. Sometimes, the afterlife of movies burns brightly. They can certainly bring it back. But, right now, I don't think there's any immediate plans."

Three years after "I Am Number Four," the best bang-for-buck box office hit of the YA craze arrived in "The Maze Runner." By that time, however, hopes for a sequel to director D. J. Caruso's movie had been well and truly dashed. Fans of "I Am Number Four" had been calling for an adaptation of the second book in the Lorien Legacies series, "The Power of Six," and in 2013, Caruso seemed fairly positive about such a thing — though he wasn't sure whether he'd be involved. Speaking to I Am Rogue, he said:

"There's been some talk in the past couple of months about trying to do something because there is this audience appetite out there [...] I think DreamWorks is getting [the rights to the other novels], too, so it'll be interesting. I don't know if I'd be involved, but I know they're talking about it."

However, no such follow-up ever materialized, and star Alex Pettyfer seemed to think he knew why. In 2021, the actor spoke to ScreenRant, telling the outlet that while he "really loved" making "I Am Number Four," he thought that DreamWorks' approach of having the book and movie debut around the same time maybe had something to do with the film's performance. "They tried some really interesting, creative publicity where the film and the book are released at the same time," he said, before going on to highlight a run of under-performing films from the studio around the same period. "DreamWorks had 'War Horse,' they had Hugh Jackman did that robot movie [the 'Rocky' meets 'Iron Giant' sci-fi sports film 'Real Steel'], and there was one other film," he said. "And I think just as a collective slate, maybe the movies didn't perform as well as they should have. And so the slate was kind of wiped clean for DreamWorks to start again with a new slate relationship with funding."

It seems, then, that despite its modest take, "I Am Number Four" simply didn't do well enough at the box office to convince DreamWorks to make a sequel. That, combined with the critical drubbing the film received, meant the franchise was shuttered before it really had a chance to get going. The movie certainly failed to make the list of /Film's own favorite young adult adaptations and isn't all that fondly recalled today. But in the age of streaming, there is surely hope for a revisit, especially given the book series has become a sprawling saga of its own.

According to author James Frey, who spoke to SFGazette in 2024, a reboot of the series might be happening with Neal Moritz producing. "We are in process on it," he said, "and I can't say whether it will actually ever get made or not, but I have great people I'm working with who are trying to make it happen, for sure." There haven't been any significant updates since then, but it seems at the very least that all is not lost.