During a painful 2006 segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show, author James Frey confessed that his addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces was made up. The book had been an unconventional pick for Oprah’s Book Club, which offered the biggest commercial boost any pre-BookTok book could get. But fame draws examination, and probes by , along with other media outlets, discovered more gaps than a Swiss cheese factory. As just one of numerous devastating examples, Frey’s assertion of a hostile, drug-laced clash with law enforcement that resulted in an 87-day prison term was actually a courteous exchange over minor infractions. Who would have thought?
This interview, occurring as it did during the declining era of broadcast television’s dominant cultural position, was major news. Maureen Dowd described it as a “” to witness Oprah emphasize the value of honesty following an election full of scandals. Frey lost his agent and publishing contract, his publisher was forced to provide refunds, and both sides dealt with legal action. Other memoirs swept up in the aftermath were hit with warning labels or scrapped. Even parodied Frey when Towelie admitted his own lies to Oprah’s paper-crafted equivalent. With his credibility destroyed, Frey’s subsequent step was clear. He had to produce a money-making franchise.
I Am Number Four, published under the pretentious alias Pittacus Lore, arrived in bookstores in 2010 and quickly rose up the sales rankings. Critics gave it mixed reviews, but this marked the peak of YA’s cultural takeover, and tepid opinions in Kirkus couldn’t halt the powerhouse. Film rights had been purchased before the book even came out, and when I Am Number Four, the movie version, arrived in theaters 15 years ago today, it embodied the cynical low point of the YA craze.
John Smith (Alex Pettyfer), also known as Four, is secretly an extraterrestrial from the planet Lorien, which has been taken over by the evil Mogadorians. He and eight other talented Loric children, called the Garde, are concealed on Earth, where the “Mogs” are hunting them (though, for reasons the film doesn’t deign to clarify, the Garde must be killed in numerical sequence). The story begins with Three’s death and John inadvertently revealing his abilities, forcing him and his protector (a wasted Timothy Olyphant) to escape to a hideout in Ohio. Naturally, even though he appears old enough to lease a vehicle, John signs up at the nearby high school, where he immediately befriends an eccentric pal, clashes with the town bully, and develops feelings for a pretty, thoughtful girl. It’s all very, shall we say, formulaic.
I Am Number Four posted respectable box office numbers, but a follow-up never came together and the novel series gradually ran out of momentum until it fizzled out in 2019. Its former fan forums are now deserted, and the impact—or absence of it—of the broader Lorien Legacies franchise is best shown by fanfiction.net. The site contains only 686 Lorien tales, while even the sports over 8,400.
That renders the film feel like an artifact nowadays. We accept ridiculous terms like Quarter Quell and Wingardium Leviosa because of what their respective franchises have achieved, but without the cultural prestige that success delivers, gloomy chatter about “Legacies” rings hollow. Everything seems overly engineered; our rebellious hero makes his entrance by flipping a Ski-Doo. Kevin Durand adds some grim humor as the menacing yet cheerful Mog commander, but there’s simply insufficient substance to make Four feel like a sincere tale instead of a collection of TVTropes entries glued together.
The tale of how I Am Number Four came to be is more compelling than its storyline, though that’s not setting the bar very high. Yet as film executives and some of our speculate about mass-producing “content” using generative AI, it’s worth revisiting how the film that delivered the flirtatious line “The Big Dipper… that’s my favourite… do you know that one?” was created.
Frey actually collaborated on I Am Number Four with MFA candidate Jobie Hughes under the banner of Frey’s Full Fathom Five, a business established with the aim of pumping out Twilight-esque YA blockbusters. Even disgraced fraudsters need to pay their bills, but in 2011, Suzanne Mozes reported that Frey was .
Writers were paid a mere $250 for completing a manuscript; although there was discussion of profit participation, publishing veterans voiced grave worries about the numerous burdensome limitations in the firm’s agreements. It’s uncertain how many of Full Fathom Five’s intended novels actually materialized (Frey asserts 240, including 40 bestsellers, but his credibility is known), and Hughes departed the defunct firm and filed suit against Frey shortly after the pair engaged in a prolonged shouting confrontation.
In Mozes’ account, Frey appears as a posturing hypocrite, someone who pontificates about being a provocative, avant-garde visionary before attempting to churn out high-concept dreck for sheer monetary gain (perhaps Mozes is overstating his case, but if so, the irony is rich). The latter objective, at any rate, was achieved. Yet as HBO reimagines Harry Potter for TV and another Hunger Games prequel featuring ridiculously-named adolescents limps toward cinemas, the Lorien Legacies probably won’t be part of our present YA nostalgia trend. There’s simply nothing worth reminiscing over.
The mindset that produced I Am Number Four, however, is ubiquitous. In a , Frey confessed to employing ChatGPT to address research queries for a 2025 novel, indicating that his latest work likely contains at least one humorous factual mistake. His refusal to conduct his own research serves as an appropriate conclusion. In a few years, we might very well be inundated with AI-generated films created by individuals who can’t be troubled to craft their own narratives, or even grossly underpay a struggling scribe to do it for them. But 15 years hence, if we’re still discussing them whatsoever, it will solely be within the framework of what a meaningless squandering of time the entire endeavor represented.