 |
Movies Based on Books 
Read the Book Before You See the Movie. Which is better? You decide. Start browsing our year-by-year lists of movie adaptations of classic novels. See the menu on the right.
Upcoming Movies Based on Books
What Should I be Reading?
Each year an average of thirty novels are made into movies for the big screen. Authors watch tensely as their stories are filtered through the hands of screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, and studio chiefs. If they're lucky, these film adaptations do the original story justice. However,
it is often the case that the book is significantly better than the movie. Here, we present upcoming movie adaptions of classic novels to keep you up-to-date on what books are being adapted for the big screen. See the right column for yearly movie and a novel listings.
| HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU (2008) (Relationships, Opposite Sex, Human Behavior, Interconnecting Stories, Adaptation)
 
PLOT: The book, based on a popular episode of Sex and the City, educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn't like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship. The Baltimore-set movie consists of interconnecting story arcs that deal with the challenges of reading or misreading human behavior, especially involving relationships. Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore, and Justin Long. AUTHOR:
Greg Behrendt
| 
| WANTED (2008) (Action, Assassins, Apathy, Murder, Self-Discovery, Adaptation)
PLOT: Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a neurotic accounts manager who works in a small cubical filling out billing reports day in and day out. He allows his boss, his girlfriend, and his best friend to walk all over him. Everything changes after he discovers his long lost father was an assassin. When his father is murdered, Wesley is recruited into his father's old organization and trained by a man named Sloan (Morgan Freeman) to follow in his dad's footsteps. An attractive female assassin (Angelina Jolie) helps him adjust. AUTHOR:
Mark Millar
| 
| NIGHTS IN RODANTHE (2008) (Romance, Father Son, Marriage, Storm, Adaptation)
PLOT: Adrienne (Diane Lane) is a woman who's trying to decide whether to stay in her unhappy marriage or not. Her life changes when Paul (Richard Gere), a doctor who is traveling to reconcile with his estranged son (James Franco), checks into an inn in a North Carolina beach town where she is staying. AUTHOR:
Nicholas Sparks
| 
| MARLEY & ME (2008) (Dogs, Family, Mischief, Love, Adaptation)
PLOT: Based on the memoir by John Grogan, the movie version of the book stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston as the proud (and sometimes embarrassed) owners of Marley, a lovably naughty, hyperactive dog. Over the course of his life, the family learns important lessons from their adorable, but neurotic pooch. AUTHOR:
John Grogan
| 
| TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE, THE (2008) (Time Travel, Romance, Love Story, Adaptation)
PLOT: The movie is based on the book by Audrey Niffenegger about a Chicago librarian named Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana), who possesses a gene that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. Henry's time traveling creates complications in his relationship with his wife, Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams). AUTHOR:
Audrey Niffenegger
| 
| THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (2009) (Detective, Africa, Culture, Mystery, Crime Solving, Adaptation)
PLOT: Airing on HBO in 2009, the movie, directed by Anthony Minghella, tells the story of a plus-size Botswana woman, who starts up the country's first female-owned detective agency. Mma Ramotswe's love of Africa, her wisdom and humor, shine through these pages as she shines her own light on the problems that vex her clients. The first book has led to a series of novels under the same title. AUTHOR:
Alexander McCall Smith
| 
| DARK KNIGHT, THE (2008) (Comic Book, Superhero, Action, Batman, Adaptation)
PLOT: The legacy of Bob Kane's comic book character Batman has been carried on by authors like Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Jeph Loeb. The 2008 movie The Dark Knight draws on many of these works, creating a much darker hero, which follows the foundation laid in 2005's Batman Begins. In The Dark Knight, Batman (Christian Bale) battles his most notorious enemy, the Joker (Heath Ledger). AUTHOR:
Bob Kane
| 
| TWIGHLIGHT (2008) (Vampire, Highschool, Romance, Forbidden Fruit , Adaptation)
PLOT: A teenage girl, Bella (Kristen Stewart), moves to Forks Washington to live with her father when her mother gets remarried. Upon arriving in Forks, Bella learns about a mysterious family of very beautiful people. When she meets one of the five children, Edward (Robert Pattinson), she finds herself spinning into a mind boggling tale of one of the deepest and scariest kinds of love that she has ever known, particularly because Eddie is a vampire. AUTHOR:
Stephenie Meyer
| 
| TOWELHEAD (2008) (Race, Predator, Adolescence, Culture, Adaptation)
PLOT: A meditation on race, adolescence and alienation, the story offers an unflinching look at what happens as a young woman's sexuality blooms when only a predatory neighbor (Aaron Eckhart) is paying attention. After 13-year-old Jasira (Summer Bishil) is sent to live with her father in Houston, she finds herself coming of age in the shadow of his old world, authoritarian ideas, which includes his dissaproval of her friendship with a boy who's black. The real threat of course is the neighbor, who, in order to get close to Jasira, hires her to baby-sit his son. AUTHOR:
Alicia Erian
| 
| CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC (2009) (Shopping, Debt, Romance, Adaptation)
PLOT: 25-year-old Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) has everything she wants, or does she? Rebecca is a shopaholic up to her heels in credit card debt. Ironically, she writes for a magazine called Successful Saving. Rebecca's "imaginative" solutions to her debt attract the attention of Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy), a multimillionaire PR representative for a finance group that is often featured in Successful Saving. AUTHOR:
Sophie Kinsella
| 
| SPIRIT, THE (2009) (action, vigilante, crime, comic book, detective, Adaptation)
PLOT: Based on the 1940s comic book created by the legendary Will Eisner, The Spirit tells the story of detective Denny Colt, who returns from a coma-like state of suspended animation. He comes back as a masked vigilante, who fights crime with the blessing of the city's police commissioner. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, and Jaime King. Graphic novelist Frank Miller directs. AUTHOR:
Will Eisner
| 
| MY SISTER'S KEEPER (2009) (Family, Sisters, Illness, Courtroom, Transplant, Adaptation)
PLOT: Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna (Abigail Breslin) hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father, Brian, inevitably puts out. Cameron Diaz stars as Sara Fitzgerald, the mother of the children. AUTHOR:
Jodi Picoult
|
Classic Movies Based on Books
Past Film Adaptations of Classic Novels
Books Just Added - Our archive of movie adaptations is always growing. Here,
we present memorable movies from the past that have recently been added to our database of movies based on novels. Whether you are familiar with the film version or not, experience the story
in it's most classic form, and then enjoy the filmmaker's vision of the author's work.
| BAMBI (1942) (Animals, Forest, Cycle of Life, Humans, Adaptation)
PLOT: Walt Disney's animated film Bambi tells the story of a young deer, Bambi, growing up in the wild after his mother is shot by hunters. The book is more encompassing, as Bambi is torn between his desire to be with his beloved mate, Faline, and his yearning for the knowledge and solitude that he admires in the prince of deer. He also tries to understand the threat that humans pose. AUTHOR:
Felix Salten
| 
| CANDY (2006) (Relationship, Addiction, Heroin, Boyfriend Girlfriend, Adaptation)
PLOT: A poet (Heath Ledger) falls in love with an art student (Abbie Cornish) who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle -- and his fondness of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair. They descend from being high on life, love, and drugs, to being shamed through prostitution, crime, addiction, and recovery. AUTHOR:
Luke Davies
| 
| LIST, THE (2007) (Religion, Deception, Love, Adaptation)
PLOT: As a struggling young attorney fresh out of law school, Renny Jacobson pines for the day he can afford the luxuries of the partners in his Charlotte firm. With news of his father's death and a secret inheritance, Renny's life will surely change forever. But the clandestine society that provides the inheritance soon threatens to change him in more ways than one. Renny's life, and the life of the woman he loves, depend on supernatural deliverance from the curse of The List. Starring Malcolm McDowell.
AUTHOR:
Robert Whitlow
| 
| STONE ANGEL, THE (2007) (Flashback, Drama, Rebellious, Marriage, Life Spanning, Adaptation)
PLOT: The elderly Hagar Shipley (Ellen Burstyn) escapes from home when her son Marvin and daughter-in-law Doris tell her that she must move into nursing care. She sets out on a journey in search of a way to reconcile with her tumultuous past. Vulnerable to an aging brain, it becomes hard for Hagar to differentiate past from present, and through flashbacks we come to know her as the passionate and rebellious bride in a remote prairie town, whose father disowns her when she marries the "wrong sort" (Cole Hauser). The movie also stars Juno's Ellen Page. AUTHOR:
Margaret Laurence
| 
| VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, A (2004) (WW I, Drama, Mutilation, Love, War, Death, Adaptation)
PLOT: The movie is based on the French novel by Sébastien Japrisot. It tells of a woman's quest to learn the truth about what happened to her fiancé in WW I. She launches an investigation into the possibility that her husband is one of five soldiers who were put to death after they self-mutilated themselves in order to get out of fighting, and ultimately the war itself. Starring Audrey Tautou. AUTHOR:
Sébastien Japrisot
| 
| 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) (Space, Technology, Evolution, Future, Adaptation)
PLOT: The movie based on the book was directed by Stanley Kubrick. Its most memorable character is an intelligent computer named HAL. The meaning behind the film has become a classic discussion topic for film students, due to its somewhat challenging plot. Numerous websites have sprung up to help explain the storyline, which explores the impact of technology on the progression of humankind. AUTHOR:
Arthur C. Clarke
| 
| ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) (Drama, Cult, Mystery, Horror, Adaptation)
PLOT: A young couple, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) move into a new apartment, only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When Rosemary becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins to control her life. Could she have been unwittingly impregnated with the devil's child? AUTHOR:
Ira Levin
| 
| ON THE BEACH (1959) (Nuclear War, Fallout, Drama, Adaptation)
PLOT: In 1964, nuclear war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual is filled with growing despair. In denial about the loss of his wife and children in the holocaust, American Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) meets careworn but gorgeous Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), who begins to fall for him. The sub returns after reconnaissance a month (or less) before the end; will Towers and Moira find comfort with each other? AUTHOR:
Nevil Shute
| 
| BEOWULF (2007) (Viking, Monster, Poem, Literary, Adventure, Adaptation)
PLOT: The warrior Beowulf must fight and defeat the monster Grendel who is terrorizing towns, and later, Grendel's mother, who begins killing out of revenge. Robert Zemeckis directed this adaptation, which he admits has very little to do with the original poem. The movie features life-like computer animation that uses live performances blended with computer graphics. Starring Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, and Ray Winstone as the fabled hero. AUTHOR:
Anonymous
| 
| TONTO WOMAN, THE (2007) (Indians, Abandonment, Kidnapping, Husband Wife, Society, Adaptation)
PLOT: A white woman is kidnapped from her home by Apache Indians. Traded to the Mojave Indians, she lives as a squaw for 11 years until she is found by her husband. Unfit for society he keeps her in a shack in the desert. Her solitary existence is transformed with the arrival of a Mexican (Francesco Quinn), who re-introduces her to her husband and leaves, only to be ambushed by her husband's men as he exits the town. AUTHOR:
Elmore Leonard
|
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.
~Martin Farquhar Tupper
|
|
|
