The Success of Books Turned into Films

It won’t come as a surprise to many that a hefty proportion of films have been adaptations of books. Some of the best loved and most notorious films of all time like ‘The Shining’, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ began life as books.



Stephen King is an author who has had many books adapted to film because of his creative and imaginative storylines and memorable characters. As well as ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, King has had several other novels adapted into motion pictures, including ‘Misery’ starring Cathy Bates and James Caan, ‘Carrie’ starring Sissy Spacek and ‘The Green Mile’ starring Tom Hanks.



‘Gone with the Wind’ is one on the most famous films of all time, and was originally written by Margaret Mitchell in May 1936. It depicted an important time in American history, so it seemed an odd choice to cast three out of the four main characters with English actors. Leslie Howard was born in 1893 and was chosen to play the sensitive, sixteen year old Ashley Wilkes from Atlanta. This casting can be deemed as quite bizarre with Leslie Howard not only being English, but in his mid forties at the time.



The film adaptation of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ was a lot cleaner than the book, as they toned down the references to the character of Holly Golightly being a prostitute. Interestingly, the author (Truman Capote) had originally wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the role of Holly instead of Audrey Hepburn. Many films have strayed from the rigid storyline of the original book, choosing to interpret the plot in different ways to create a more visual story.



The blockbuster film ‘I, Robot’ starring Will Smith was originally written as a collection of nine short stories by science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov.



However, the film only takes small particles of the work. Asimov’s work is held in much higher regard than the screenplay by many because of the psychological depth in the original writing compared to the film. Another screenplay based on the ‘I, Robot’ collection had been published in the 1970s and had some contribution by Isaac Asimov himself.



’Eat Pray Love’ is another book adaptation released in 2010 starring Julia Roberts and James Franco. Other book to film adaptations released in 2010 and 2009 included ‘Sherlock Holmes’, ‘The Road’, ‘Shutter Island’ with Leonardo Di Caprio, Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ directed by Tim Burton and Charles Dickens’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’ starring Jim Carrey and Colin Firth.



Following a successful adaptation to film, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Series is set to continue with ‘The Hobbit’ directed by the renowned Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo will also be directing another version of Frankenstein. This will be the latest movie interpretation of the story, following Kenneth Branagh’s attempt in 1994.