Do you notice how Hollywood is turning many books into a movies?

You are absolutely right that the idea factory in Hollywood has dried up. There are very few original movies comming out. Just look at all the remakes lately.

The best place for new material is on the bookself (well, maybe the Amazon list since we now have only two major bookstores left and I suspect shortly there will be only one).

Movies need what they term a "high concept". Not what you think it means. It means a new and novel story that has not been done before. In script form, these are getting rarer and rarer. At least using novels lets some authors cash in on their work.


Richard

As far as I can tell, Hollywood has always adapted the most popular books into films or TV series, if the books lend themselves to adaptation at all.

Well have you noticed that they never seem to follow the book "exactly"?

Movies like Friends With Benefits are what we used to call "mind candy'. All fluffy and sweeet without substance. Drivel for uninspired minds to kill 110 minutes.

We all have our likes and dislikes, and the need to escape from reality every now and then into a story. But good solid scripts for movies that I would watch over and over are rare anymore.


Richard

DwayneA said:

Well have you noticed that they never seem to follow the book "exactly"?

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The stories in most books don't follow any normal 'beat sheet' for screenplays and therefore are rewritten to conform.


Richard

Hollywood definitely seems to be out of ideas, but I don't agree that it's always a bad thing when they make a movie from a book. Yes, they often mess it up, and it is sad that a lot of people will only see the movie and never read the book, but I think occasionally a movie can inspire reading, which I consider a good thing. I know plenty of people who have read the book after seeing a good movie, myself included.

Very few novels get made into movies.

When you have a best-selling book, however, producers think "Built-in market base."

That list is a bit of a cheat. They're drawing the list from two hundred years' worth of novels, and sixty years' worth of movies. And some of the movies listed weren't based on novels at all. Romancing the Stone, for example, while it's about a novelist, was an original screenplay. Capote was a bio-pic about a writer, not based on the book he was writing at the time.

What might be interesting would be to take a list of all the books published in a given year and see how many of them became movies, and all the movies in a given year and see how many of them were based on books.

Hollywood, like every other industry, wants to hedge its bets as well as it can - especially when things are in downturn. Taking a property / series with a built in audience provides a bit of padding when it comes to box office receipts. Though in the cases of popular series that aren't handled well (*cough* Percy Jacks0n *cough*) they alienate the fans they want to attract.

It's not a lack of ideas that sends moviemakers clamoring for material from novels, it's the promise of revenue. And, on the other side, that revenue stream runs to the author, too. The author gets paid when the rights are purchased, and they get paid when new fans are introduced to the series via the film version, and go looking for the books.

Book + movie = win / win

James D. Macdonald said:

Very few novels get made into movies.

When you have a best-selling book, however, producers think "Built-in market base."

That list is a bit of a cheat. They're drawing the list from two hundred years' worth of novels, and sixty years' worth of movies. And some of the movies listed weren't based on novels at all. Romancing the Stone, for example, while it's about a novelist, was an original screenplay. Capote was a bio-pic about a writer, not based on the book he was writing at the time.

What might be interesting would be to take a list of all the books published in a given year and see how many of them became movies, and all the movies in a given year and see how many of them were based on books.

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That would be a very long list of published books and a very short list of movies made. The odds are not one I would bet on. And I like longshots.


Richard

Seaclusion said:

That would be a very long list of published books and a very short list of movies made. The odds are not one I would bet on. And I like longshots.


Richard

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But it might be even or better odds to the list that had all given screenplays in a year next to the ones that got made into films.

Cyia said:

But it might be even or better odds to the list that had all given screenplays in a year next to the ones that got made into films.

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True, writting a screenplay and getting it made is a real longshot. Maybe as bad as playing the lottery.


Richard

Hollywood (and other places) have always made films out of books. A good story is a good story. Not sure why it's a problem.

IdiotsRUs said:

Hollywood (and other places) have always made films out of books. A good story is a good story. Not sure why it's a problem.

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I don't think it's a problem. But most book stories do not lend themselves easily to the 'beat sheet' needed for a movie and therefore need some sort of modification. Some people object to that not being true to the original story.


Richard

Well, movies are visual, and books aren't so ofc many will need tweaking

I didn't think that's what the OP was saying though.

If authors can come up with ideas, why do movie directors and producers always feel the need to cash in on that idea? Did the screenwriter's imagination pond dry out?

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Ofc then there's mention of 'cheapening' which seems rather hyperbolic, like film is a less worthy media. And plenty of people read AND go to movies.

Still not sure what the problem is.

IdiotsRUs said:

Ofc then there's mention of 'cheapening' which seems rather hyperbolic, like film is a less worthy media. And plenty of people read AND go to movies.

Still not sure what the problem is.

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Me for one.

The problem isn't with books being adapted to movies, it's that Hollywood (major studios, not necessarily independents) is very nervous and very risk-averse. It's almost impossible to sell an original screenplay at the moment, I'm told, unless you're already a big name or very lucky. A novel is a known quantity and far less risky. So are sequels and remakes.

This is one reason why I've never restricted my viewing to Hollywood movies. And one of the biggest hits of last year? Inception. An original screenplay.* The public is not stupid.

*Directed by Christopher Nolan, who could probably make what he wanted after the shedload of money The Dark Knight made. And the reason he was allowed to do this personal project was I'm sure in return for making another Batman movie. The fact that Inception was such a big hit was a bonus.

Are you sure? Because I remember we brought this up in class when I was a tiny Archerchick, and that's about 20 years ago. The idea that people went to see the movies instead of reading the books was also a concern.
Lately I've gotten the impression that people see the movies in addition to reading the books, but maybe I've missed something.

Old Trend in Film Industry

COOL THREAD! I did a research paper on something like this at my film school. I'm a very visual person, but I love storytelling. Yes, it seems that Hollywood has jumped back on the trend of adapting books (aside from the 3D trend), but it's not like filmmakers and screenwriters are stealing ideas from novels.

There have always been adaptations, from novels and even other plays. Way way way back when, everybody wasn't literate, so movies conveyed the story in a visual aspect, because there are more people who can watch than who could comprehend reading. Today, yeah people may know the movie before the book. Movies are quick and to the point, easy to read and understand. Movies can reach a broader audience than some novels sometimes. I'm not knocking novels at all - I'm writing them for Godsakes. There is a valuable relationship between books and movies. It's very rare, but there are some books inspired by movies.

I'm more into the independent (indie) film industry than the Hollywood one, but I appreciate both. I personally write to see it on the screen, ultimately. It is a tragedy when movies aren't true to the novel's essence, but as it was already mentioned, too much tweaking happens in the adaptation phase with scripts, producers, and actors that by the time it actually hits the screen it becomes a different story than what the novel made. Of course you have "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter", but I'm gonna say "The Godfather" as one of the most successful movies adapted from a book because it's more popular than the novel. It helps that the author Mario Puzo actually got to co-write the script.

Once upon a time, the film adaptations were handled with care and finesse and turned out as good as or better than the book, and oftentimes studios would proudly advertise how much money had been lavished on bringing the story to life.

David Lean transformed Doctor Zhivago and Seven Pillars of Wisdom into lush, globe-spanning historical epics of crushed idealism.

All of Kubrick's films were based on books, like the Shining, Doctor Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket, and so were some of Hitchcock's, like Psycho.

Apocalypse Now was a wild, ballsy take on Heart of Darkness that shifted everything to the Vietnam War.

Ditto for West Side Story, which took Romeo and Juliet to New York and added musical elements.

Mario Puzo's The Godfather went from pulp paperback to masterfully-directed (if morally reprehensible) film.

Then, during the 1980s, that stopped. Part of it was a greed-oriented corporate culture conspiring to wring as much money as possible out of the American people, part of it was backlash by audiences against the New Hollywood art movement in favor of blockbusters following in the wake of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

It stopped being about the movie, and became about the product. While that mentality had always been present to some degree, the era of Reagonomics is what really sent the American film industry into the cold, cynical grab for cash it is today. All that matters is profit-to-cost ratio as high as they can get it and lots of people in the seats via whatever cheap gimmicks they could throw in, including completely unnecessary literary adaptations.

Personally, I'd be ecstatic if a novel of mine got turned into a movie (assuming I ever get a novel published), as long as the movie was half decent.

Can you imagine the potential for pick-up lines in bars?

"You know the movie [Title of Popular Movie Based on JayMan's Best Selling Novel]? Oh, you've seen it three times already? Yeah, well, I wrote the book."
(Followed by a nonchalant sip of my drink, of course.)

n3onkn1ght said:

Once upon a time, the film adaptations were handled with care and finesse and turned out as good as or better than the book, and oftentimes studios would proudly advertise how much money had been lavished on bringing the story to life.
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Then, during the 1980s, that stopped. Part of it was a greed-oriented corporate culture conspiring to wring as much money as possible out of the American people, part of it was backlash by audiences against the New Hollywood art movement in favor of blockbusters following in the wake of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

It stopped being about the movie, and became about the product. While that mentality had always been present to some degree, the era of Reagonomics is what really sent the American film industry into the cold, cynical grab for cash it is today. All that matters is profit-to-cost ratio as high as they can get it and lots of people in the seats via whatever cheap gimmicks they could throw in, including completely unnecessary literary adaptations.

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That's a bit melodramatic.

You're comparing the best known older movie adaptations with the average movie coming out today.

When it comes to adaptations: what about Rapunzel? It's about as commercial as you can get--not only Hollywood, but Disney! Yet it's a wonderfully imaginative, not to mention thoughtful, adaptation for children of an old fairytale. Speaking of adapted children's films, don't forget How to Train Your Dragon--a cynically done adaptation, it is not.

And it's ridiculous to say that there are no new stories coming out of Hollywood. The King's Speech. Black Swan. Toy Story 3. Inception. Up. Inglourious Basterds. The Hurt Locker. Winter's Bone. Those are just a handful of examples from the last few years. There are many, many more. Check on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or Wikipedia if you need a refresher on the movies that have been created in the past 20 years.

The difference between now and the pre-1980s is that there are many more movies being made now, period. There are many more bad movies, just as there are many more excellent movies. Technology has improved the movie creation process, and more people than ever are in the movie business. It's only natural that some filmmakers look to the rich source of books as starting material for their projects.

The movie industry has gotten bigger, but at its heart it is the same thing it has been for many decades.

As Celia said, it's bankability. Fewer movies are made every year than books published, and they are a heck of a lot more expensive to make. Which means there's a great risk in greenlighting the film in the first place, so studios want a built-in audience. That means delving into popular books, comic books, actors/actresses, TV series, and directors (like Nolan and Abrams and Spielberg) that have a chance at return in name alone.

And I don't think J. K. Rowling is complaining that the Harry Potter film franchise is worth more than $7 billion worldwide and growing.