With five-hankie romance The Fault in Our Stars set to crush Tom Cruise’s sci-fi vehicle Edge of Tomorrow at the box office this weekend, YA adaptations have perhaps never packed more force in Hollywood than they do right now. And though Fault, starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, was undoubtedly the most anticipated adaptation that is hitting screens this summer, another beloved teen-targeted novel is making the trip to the big screen in August: Gayle Forman’s If I Stay.
Fans of the bestseller were vocally worried when Kick-Ass actress Chloë Grace Moretz was cast in the role of Mia, a 17-year-old musician who is faced with the toughest decision of her life when her entire family is killed and she’s left in a coma after a car crash. Turns out, they should have never doubted the talented young star. In the new trailer for If I Stay, Moretz provides voice-over lifted directly from the prologue to Forman’s book – and she absolutely kills it.
The trailer, set to M83’s uplifting “Outro,” gives us what’s likely our best look at the film yet. All the stars, from Mireille Enos as Mia’s mother to Liana Liberato as her best friend Kim and Jamie Blackley as her heartbroken boyfriend Adam, are glimpsed in the footage, but the star is unquestionably Moretz. As she says at one point, “I run the show.”
The story, which finds Mia looking back over her life as she decides whether to wake up or slip away into the great unknown, is going to be a tough sell to general audiences, so the studio behind If I Stay is likely banking on Forman and Moretz’s equally rabid fanbases showing up in droves. Hopefully, with the talented actress attached, director R.J. Cutler will be able to deliver a worthwhile adaptation of the tearjerker. If this trailer is any indication, he’s certainly set to bring the emotion in spades.
If I Stay opens August 22nd.
