At a smaller, more exclusive and intimate event hosted at LAYA Restaurant Thursday evening, Netflix took the opportunity to remind viewers of its roots in the YA genre by gathering talent from projects past, present and future that have become hits in the space.

Attendees were greeted by a tunnel plastered with posters from Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, Heartstopper, Ginny & Georgia, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, XO, Kitty, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, On My Block, Forever, My Life With The Walter Boys The Kissing Booth, Élite, Outer Banks, Young Royals, Sex Education and newer releases like Don’t Say Good Luck interspersed with placeholder title cards for shows and films not yet released like The Sticks, Poster, Just Picture It starring Millie Bobby Brown, The Body and Crew Girl. Not all posters or stills that made up the collage had talent present to represent them, though.

In what could be looked at as a response to Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest at the end of June at Nya Studios, the streamer trotted out talent from films dating as early as 2018 like Sierra Burgess Is A Loser and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before alongside the main trio of stars of My Life With the Walter Boys on a small red carpet of which Deadline was not a part beyond filming arrivals. Not only were talent mingling up close, but various stations set up throughout the venue offered custom goodies to take home.

A perfume station mixed various scents with bases inspired by Outer Banks, Ginny & Georgia, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, Never Have I Ever, and On My Block to top off with other notes along the lines of empowering, graceful, creative, spontaneous and more. A charm bracelet station had wristlets with charm options of ice skates, hockey sticks, cowboy boots, books, evil eyes, hearts and more to create combinations to string onto phones or wear as jewelry. And last, but certainly not least, there were tattoo stations offering permanent smaller flash tattoos as well as temporary ones. Talent visited tall stations.

A curious note that the playlist soundtracking the event contained needle drops from films like To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and XO, Kitty (Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” & “Anna of the North – Lovers”), People We Meet On Vacation (Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl”) and Voicemails for Isabelle (Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”), but other songs that stood out were Audrey Hobert’s “Sue Me” which features in Off Campus and Tame Impala’s “Dracula,” which features in a club scene in Megan Park’s Sterling Point, both Prime Video shows.

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With the splash that Prime Video made this summer in terms of young adult and new adult series and films, many based on beloved books, it is worth noting that Netflix had a moment like this about a decade ago, but it started more with book to film adaptations like the previously mentioned To All The Boys I’ve Loved before movie trilogy based on the books by Jenny Han. Han then took The Summer I Turned Pretty to Prime Video as a trilogy adaptation of three seasons as well, and a movie conclusion is on the way.

As Deadline noted, a similar wrap-up is in talks for XO, Kitty, the spinoff series of the To All The Boys films starring Lara Jean Song-Covey’s (Lana Condor) younger sister Katherine ‘Kitty’ (Anna Cathcart). Cathcart was in attendance, but no sign of Condor, who did just star in Prime Video’s The Devil’s Mouth.

Emma Pasarow, co-star of another notable Netflix film adaptation of Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride (2022), which also starred Off Campus’ Season 1 lead Belmont Cameli, was in attendance. Leah Lewis, who starred in Alice Wu’s The Half Of It (2020), also provided a bit of a blast from the past.

Some overlap could be seen with Isaac Arellanes, who features in My Life With the Walter Boys, promoting the upcoming show The Sticks alongside castmates and teammates Costa D’Angelo (East of Eden, Tell Me Lies, Season 2 of We Were Liars), Josh Macqueen (Motorheads), Shai Chase and more. Note here that We Were Liars and Motorheads are Prime Video shows.

A quick tangent to remind that some of Prime Video’s recent YA endeavors have ended up being canceled after their first seasons like Motorheads starring Michael Cimino, Melissa Collazom, Uriah Shelton, Josh Macqueen — who has transitioned to The Sticks — as well as The Runarounds from Outer Banks creator Jonas Pate. And on the Outer Banks wave, Madelyn Cline appeared in The Map That Leads To You for Prime Video, a book adaptation of sorts from Temple Hill who have a presence in the YA book adaptations world as well.

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Taking a step back from specific talent crossover and returning to Netflix’s lengthier timeline in the coming-of-age category, still more shows that premiered a while ago — Chilling Adventures, Young Royals, Élite and On My Block — felt like a bit of a stretch to include in the current zeitgeist, though Esther Expósito of Élite will soon appear in Prime Video’s Drawn Together based on the book by Mercedes Ron and Edvin Ryding of Young Royals has just been cast in Season 2 of Heated Rivalry.

As the scoreboard stands, Neflix has more experience in the space, both with original content and book adaptations, and they have branched out into various other genres like horror, science fiction, thrillers, Western, sports and comedy while Prime Video’s entry into the arena this summer, which has proven strong, focuses on specific summery settings, love stories and book adaptations with heavy fanbases. For example, Lizzy Greene from Ransom Canyon, which definitely skews more adult compared to a show like My Life With the Walter Boys, was in attendance last night, and she will also appear in Netflix’s upcoming The 99’ers film adaptation about the 1999 U.S. Women’s National Team that won the World Cup.

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The cast of A Different World, coming Sept. 24, walked the carpet as well, but Netflix reboots and remakes are a conversation for another time.

Prime Video’s sample size of offerings is much smaller and therefore seems more cohesive right now, but here I will note that Netflix has the next Carley Fortune adaptation following Every Year After at Prime Video: they’ve just entered production on the This Summer Will Be Different show. They also have Elle Kennedy’s Girl Abroad in the adaptation process in the wake of Off Campus, signaling that they want pieces of both pies so far only served up by Prime Video. It’s worth remembering too that Netflix has a significant chunk of the Emily Henry adaptations with People We Meet On Vacation leading the bunch, though these stories feel more new adult in ways. As many creators have recently told Deadline, coming of age takes place across one’s lifetime.

Zooming back in on Netflix’s upcoming slate, Crew Girl out Sept. 10 might offer a love triangle to rival that of My Life With the Walter Boys. The drama series watches 16-year-old Teagan Tao become the coxswain of the all-boys rowing team at her new prestigious high school while she deals with family drama and fallout. Created by showrunner Vivian Lin, the frothy series has more Netflix YA power behind it in Jeff Norton (Geek Girl, Finding Her Edge). The Sticks will make its debut in the hockey rink to compete with Off Campus and Heated Rivalry sometime next year. Quinn Shephard’s The Body will likely scare up an audience of some sort starting Nov. 11 with its combination of Catholic high school drama and horror as well as stars like Sofia Wyle (High School Musical, The School for Good and Evil) and Gabby Windey making her acting debut.

A standout pairing in attendance on the red carpet yesterday evening was Beatrice Kitsos (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty, Jurassic World Rebirth) who will helm the upcoming film adaptation of Lynn Painter’s YA romance novel Better Than The Movies, directed by Julia Hart (Don’t Say Good Luck). Iacono marks another notable Prime Video and now Netflix crossover.

RELATED: Everything We Know About Netflix’s ‘Better Than The Movies’ Feature Adaptation So Far

Prime Video’s summer of obsession is nearly over after The Last Sunrise and Drawn Together, both film adaptations, arrive on the streamer this month, with The Love Hypothesis on the horizon in September and likely Clashing Through The Snow in December. Netflix will have more seasonal offerings from Crew Girl to The Body to the newly announced Sunshine Girls coming in December. Forever Season 2 is currently in production, and Finding Her Edge Season 2 will enter production later this month.

It will be interesting to see how both Netflix and Prime Video, and even HBO Max to a lesser degree, move forward in the YA genre as time goes on. With a slate as big as Netflix’s, it becomes simultaneously easy to connect the dots of youth, coming of age, first-time romance and more between their shows and films, but also unwieldy or diluted at times with such a large load. Again, as Prime Video moves forward with its considerably smaller menu thus far — though sequel seasons are in the works for shows like Off Campus, Every Year After and We Were Liars, the challenge the streamer may face lies between deciding to diversify or double down on certain subgenres of the YA — and New Adult in the likes of Off Campus and Every Year After — landscape.

The question is whether any one network or streamer has claim to talent or the YA genre, and how this flag-planting will shape trajectories of the actors at the height of this resurgence of sorts, especially those who don’t want to be defined by certain roles. But, one big takeaway — that is not new — is that YA does, undeniably, factor into stardom, aside from any streaming brand.

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