A rather highly anticipated Young Adult feature film adaptation is undergoing a director change.  Last September we reported that David Slade (30 Days of Night, Twilight: Eclipse) had been set to direct Disney’s adaptation of Ally Condie’s futuristic novel Matched, but now it appears that Slade is out and G.I. Joe: Retaliation director Jon M. Chu is in.  The book is the first in a trilogy that centers on a young girl living in a highly-controlling society (ie. people are told what to read, watch, believe, etc.) who makes a rebellious decision to reject an arranged romance and follow her own heart.  Hit the jump for more details.

 Director David Slade is taking his young adult franchise film experience (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) and putting it to good use to kick off another adaptation, Matched.  The YA novel from author Ally Condie was previously acquired by Disney, who set Michelle and Kieran Mulroney (Sherlock Holmes:A Game of Shadows) to pen the script.  The book is the first in a trilogy that centers on a young girl living in an uber-controlling society and her rebellious decision to reject an arranged romance and follow her own heart.  Hit the jump for more on Slade’s appointment to the adaptation.

Kieran and Michele Mulroney are the husband and wife writing team behind Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Tackling the task of writing a sequel and making it more compelling than the original was a challenge, but one that they had a lot of fun with.

During this exclusive interview with Collider, Kieran and Michele Mulroney talked about the challenges that come with writing a sequel when you didn’t write the first film, the changes that were made throughout the process of developing the story, how they came up with the backstory for Moriarty, even though they decided to cut it out of the script, and getting to use efficient warfare and more modern weapons. They also talked about currently working on adapting the Victor Hugo classic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Josh Brolin attached to star and produce, wanting to remain faithful to the story while doing some new things with the character of Quasimodo, and also adapting the young adult novel Matched, which is set in the future. Check out what they had to say after the jump:

At the press junket for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Collider got the opportunity to chat with husband and wife writing team, Kieran and Michele Mulroney, who are the screenwriters of the film. While we will run that portion of the interview, closer to the film’s December 16^th release, we did want to share what they had to say about the two projects they’re currently developing, simultaneously.

Much like the daunting task of adapting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the big screen, Kieran and Michele Mulroney are currently working on adapting the Victor Hugo classic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Josh Brolin attached to star and produce. Wanting to remain faithful to the story while doing some new things with the character of Quasimodo, the two are having fun with the process. At the same time, they are adapting the young adult novel Matched, which is set in the future. Check out what they had to say after the jump.

Chalk one up for great expectations.  Disney and Offspring Entertainment have won a bidding-war with Paramount to secure the rights to the yet-to-be-released first installation of the Ally Condie young adult novel trilogy Matched.  The novel, which isn’t available until November 30th, is set in a society that “dictates what people read, watch and believe.”  Based on that bit of information, it sounds like Disney is a perfect fit for the material (Note: my cynicism doesn’t take away from my love of Beauty and the Beast).

Per Variety, Matched, “with its love triangle and young characters, is being described as yet another potential Twilight for Disney” (recently, the studio also picked up the rights to Lauren Kate’s “angel love triangle” Fallen for similar purposes).  This sounds great because if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s young girls thinking their lives could ever be complete without having a good man to take care of them.  All snarkiness aside, to learn more about what to expect from Matched, hit the jump for a quick synopsis of Condie’s novel.