Less than a year after juggernaut series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” concluded, Prime Video has already found another hit to ignite a hungry YA-loving fan base in “Off Campus,” the TV adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s bestselling book series.
With its trailer alone racking up 9.2 million views, the college-set romance drama ignited fans on social media, and, if you ask any woman between the ages of 16 and, let’s say, 35, it’s probably on their radar. The show hooked fans early with its story of two star-crossed college co-eds: a bookish aspiring musician who begrudgingly makes a deal with a hockey jock to pretend they’re dating so her real crush, a college rock star, will finally notice her. But it’s the sprinkling of R-rated sex throughout that has inspired memes aplenty on social media.
In fact, “Off Campus” mixes the sweet romance found in “The Summer I Turned Pretty” with the steaminess — and hockey focus — of “Heated Rivalry,” reflecting a growing brand of romance books taking over BookTok that lean on trope-y romance, happy endings and, of course, plenty of smut.
The streamer has plenty more where “Off Campus” came from, as it’s gearing up to launch adaptations of BookTok sensations “Every Year After” and “The Love Hypothesis”; “Legally Blonde” spinoff prequel “Elle”; and other YA series like “Sterling Point,” from “My Old Ass” filmmaker Megan Park, and a handful of returning series over the next 12 months. And there’s even more in the works, including adaptations of buzzy books “Fourth Wing,” “Rose Hill” and “Boys of Tommen,” to name a few.
A common thread among these shows? They’re based on books that blew up on TikTok in a subsection of social media called “BookTok,” where fans make videos reviewing and obsessing over new books, igniting a buying frenzy that has even Barnes & Noble creating displays that say “As Seen on BookTok.”
It’s a conscious and, thus far, winning strategy for Prime Video to lean into adaptations of books that are popping on social media, and the streamer was so bullish on “Off Campus” that it gave the series an early Season 2 renewal before it aired, with production starting this week.
In the wake of the massive success of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Prime Video has doubled down on YA programming and found its next frontier in the vibrant online community of romance-driven bookworms who are ready to obsess about bringing the perfect moments of their favorite books to life. The streamer is leaning into BookTok wholeheartedly, even launching an “Obsessed Fest” live event for fans this summer in Los Angeles to engage with their slate. Insiders told TheWrap that earning the fans’ trust is key in launching these successful adaptations, which are a big part of Prime Video’s strategy to woo young viewers from rival streamer Netflix.
“These are some of the most engaged, passionate audiences in entertainment,” Amazon TV head Peter Friedlander told TheWrap via email. “They’re discovering stories, recommending them to friends and building communities around them on social. When you bring those stories to screen, it becomes a great experience for that fan — you’ve read the book, you’ve talked about it, and now you get to see it come to life.”
Netflix got a head start on filling the niche of soapy teen dramas that used to permeate the CW and Freeform in the 2000s and 2010s. Steamy romances like “Bridgerton” and YA shows like “Ginny and Georgia” and “My Life With the Walter Boys” hit big for the streamer, but as Netflix turned its attention toward prestige dramas and broader concepts, Prime Video started investing heavily in the genre and the largely female audience that comes with it — developing relationships with YA vets like “Vampire Diaries” creator Julie Plec and Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the duo behind “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl.”
“There are generations of people who love this genre already, so it’s not just tapping into one small subset or one micro generation,” media studies scholar and “Teen TV” author Stefania Marghitu told TheWrap. “If you blend in those nods and those references and those homages, then the older audiences are going to love it. There’s a whole demographic of women who like yearning rom-com softcore smut.”
Finding the next hit
While “The Summer I Turned Pretty” wrapped up its third and final season last fall, Prime Video has been building its YA pipeline for years with its dedicated IP team embedded in the literary and publishing space.
Friedlander pointed to romantasy BookTok hit “Fourth Wing,” which Amazon optioned before it was even published, and Stephen King’s classic “Carrie,” which creator Mike Flanagan pitched “as a coming-of-age series that creates entirely new entry points for a younger audience.”
Those titles alone underline the diversity within the streamer’s slate of YA or teen-focused book adaptations, broadening the audience beyond just the hot romances found in “Off Campus,” “Every Summer After” or “The Love Hypothesis.”
“No community is a monolith,” Friedlander said. “There are many different fandoms out there — people who love steamy romance, people who love coming-of-age thrillers, people who want fantasy epics. Our slate is designed to reflect that range.”
Just as Amazon has a “unique structural advantage” with having book customers convert to viewers, “Off Campus” producer Temple Hill, which is also behind “Rose Hill” and “Boys of Tommen,” is well versed in this particular type of story. The production company run by Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen has been at the forefront of hugely successful book-to-screen adaptations over the last two decades, from 2000s sensation “Twilight” to all of the John Green adaptations, including “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Looking for Alaska,” which has translated into an established relationship with publishers.
Godfrey said the key is spotting a hit before it’s a hit.
“It’s getting to them early and reading them early and seeing something about a book that you fall in love with and connect to, and then if you’re smart, you get somebody interested in it before it becomes a giant success, because that’s kind of the only way to get ahead of it,” Godfrey told TheWrap.
The genre’s shift to streaming has also enabled more fluidity across series and movies, opening the door for just as many BookTok film adaptations as TV, including “The Love Hypothesis” and the upcoming “Red, White and Royal Blue” sequel. Prime Video is also in production on a “The Summer I Turned Pretty” movie continuation.
But often, these kinds of adaptations take patience.
“Off Campus” was optioned by Amazon in 2019, four years after “The Deal,” which serves as the basis for Season 1, was published but still as Kennedy was expanding the franchise with additional books. Temple Hill called for submissions for an open writing assignment for the adaptation, which brought them to first-time showrunner Louisa Levy, who was paired with YA veteran Gina Fattore (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Gilmore Girls”) — a practice the streamer has embraced with its slate.
“What I saw in the script was just the chance to do a show like all these shows that I’ve worked on when I was coming up,” Fattore told TheWrap. “We have moved away from these character-based shows that were just the heartbeat of the WB and the CW … We miss making them and the fans miss them, too.”
Getting fan approval
Coming out of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” Friedlander said the biggest lesson learned was earning trust with the audience.
“These fans care deeply about the source material and want to feel like the adaptation is in the right hands,” he said. “We’ve been very intentional about that with our upcoming slate.”
It’s why Godfrey always seeks out a TV writer who understands “what is appealing about the books, what the fans love about the books and making sure that they can dramatize that over either episodes or a movie.”
They found that in Levy and Fattore, who walked a fine line of pleasing book fans while also crafting a compelling series, which Levy noted is “not always the same thing.”
“A big part of adapting any book, but especially books as beloved as these ones, was to identify the non-negotiable things and then go from there and see how many other things we could fold into it,” Levy said.
“Do not screw up that beautiful book” was also the north star for “We Were Liars” bosses and YA vets Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie, per Plec, who told TheWrap Adly MacKenzie fought tooth and nail to keep fan-favorite lines from the book in the series about teen friends vacationing in an idyllic New England town.
While the BookTok fandom is especially loud about their opinions and hopes for the shows, the fan craze is not unique to vets like Godfrey, who recalled the anticipation during early rounds of “Twilight” casting, or Fattore, who chuckled while remembering the message boards for fandoms of “Buffy” or “The X-Files.”
“When we were making ‘Fault in Our Stars’ and had hundreds of people on set wanting to get a glimpse of the scenes we were shooting, or same thing with ‘Twilight,’ I, at that moment, was like, ‘Wow, these fans are passionate about what we’re doing and care very, very deeply,’” Godfrey said, adding that the fan passion still exists today, it’s just “amplified on your phone” through social media.
Prime Video hopes to keep those fans engaged with its live event “Obsessed Fest” on June 27 in Los Angeles, which boasts panels, fan engagements and content creation opportunities across a dozen of its teen-focused titles.
“A live event gives a fan community a real-world connection with the shows they love — it creates moments that generate excitement, then radiate across social platforms,” Friedlander explained when asked about the origin of the event. “When you have a fandom this engaged, giving them a space to gather is a natural extension of the relationship.”
Call it Comic-Con for YA shows.
Levy, for her part, is keen to keep the “Off Campus” train rolling, especially with so much source material to thumb through. “We can keep going for multiple generations,” Levy said, acknowledging the later books that follow the children of the lead characters.
“For now, we’re going to focus on the first four books … and then beyond that, we’ll see what Amazon pays us to do.”
