Irreverent rather than cynical, he freely shares that he intends to “live an extraordinary life” and bonds with Hazel over her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, written by Dutch-American author Peter Van Houten ( Willem Dafoe), which just happens to be about living with cancer. Despite losing a leg to cancer, his disease is in remission and he’s dreaming of new ways to conquer the world, along with his best friend Isaac ( Nat Wolff), who’s battling the affliction as well. Hazel gets a chance to branch out when, at the urging of both her mom and her doctor, she joins an often lame though occasionally amusing church-based cancer-survivor support group, where she meets 18-year-old Augustus “Gus” Waters (Elgort), an equally precocious teen with a rather more constructive outlook than Hazel’s. Instead, her most constant companions are the oxygen tank connected to the breathing tube that supports her seriously compromised lungs, along with her concerned mother, Frannie ( Laura Dern), and protective father, Michael ( Sam Trammell). A cancer survivor since the age of 13, she’s fully in possession of both keen intelligence and sharp wit, if not her health – a challenging combination for a kid who could clearly do with a few more friends than she actually has.
If any teenager can reasonably be described as “ordinary,” then 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Woodley) is far from it. With the onset of summer vacation and few similar distractions in theaters at the outset, The Fault in Our Starsshould perform strongly out of the gate, with the potential to show significant staying power in the weeks following. Both are likely to be strong selling points with the film’s youth-skewing target audience, which is being further softened up by a robust marketing campaign and Green’s own substantial social media presence. With the book’s millions of adoring fans eagerly anticipating the movie’s release, a distinct risk of blow-back was practically built in to the project.įortunately, director Josh Boone and his filmmaking team appear to have minimized the downside, in part by casting fast-rising star Shailene Woodley in the lead, along with her Divergent franchise co-star Ansel Elgort. With interest in adapting John Green’s fourth novel running high even before its 2012 debut atop The New York Times best-seller list, Twilight producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen managed to snatch up the film rights to the hugely popular narrative, which may have been a bit of a “be careful what you wish for” moment.
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