Have you ever wondered what it would be like for your favorite book series to come alive on the big screen?
Book-to-TV adaptations have been around for over a century; a silent film version of “Cinderella” being the first one released in 1899. Since then, hundreds of books have been converted to video form, whether it be through TV show or movie.
Some adaptations to TV shows have been a success, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” being a prime example. It’s been renewed for new seasons with the most recent one released on July 14, 2023. We’ve also seen some amazing film adaptations such as “The Hunger Games Film” series, “Little Women”, “The Maze Runner” and “Dune.”
Here are some of the reviews people have written about these adaptations:
- The Hunger Games Film series: “Thrilling and superbly acted, The Hunger Games captures the dramatic violence, raw emotion, and ambitious scope of its source novel.”
- Little Women: “Greta Gerwig’s experimental take adds clarity and wisdom to character developments and relationships that make the viewing experience more rewarding.”
- The Maze Runner: “As director Wes Ball builds the eeriness around the complex entrapment of a community of boys living a Lord Of The Flies type existence, he is ably aided by imaginative and well-executed production design and special effects.”
- Dune: “Denis Villeneuve’s windswept epic is engrossing enough to maintain an audience with an intermission and a running time twice its length.”
With good reviews from the public, these adaptations are very popular. It goes to show that both tv and film adaptations can be just as good as the book or maybe even better.
A new adaptation came out this summer, Holly Jackson’s murder mystery novel “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”. The show has been getting mixed reviews due to some people claiming production missed key plotlines.
If the author has more say in the script and what scenes make the cut from the book, it would seem more complete like the book. Instead of having cliff hangers and scenes that are similar to the book but then are different.
The author should have the final say in the script. However, an adaptation to TV/film will be different from the book in order to keep viewership and entertain the audience.
The difference between writing a novel and screenwriting, is that when you write a novel, you develop your characters through description and internal dialogue. In script writing, you develop your characters through actions and dialogue. The format, pacing and the length are also different and crucial to a story. In writing a novel there will guidelines are looser and longer volume and the pacing can vary from author to author.
According to Master Class another aspect of screenwriting is screenwriting software, as it “is essential for both aspiring screenwriters and professional screenwriters and will help you quickly format your first draft.”
The screenwriting is a small part that adds along with the volume of the play/script that makes it the best. When both aspects of making a movie or tv show work simultaneously.
The volume depends on the storyline and pacing can also depend on the genre, for example thrillers are more fast paced.
In a Deadline article, Holly Jackson said, “I would do a lot of notes on the scripts to try and get them into good shape and always get them to be closer to the books. I’d be the first to admit that if you just took “A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder” exactly as it is and put it on screen, it’d be really boring. Pip spends a lot of the time just on her computer. That’s not fun to watch.”
Usually, the author doesn’t get much of a final say in the script of their adaptation, however, that depends. When making the “Harry Potter” Movies, J.K. Rowling had a lot of final say in scripts. In the making of the “A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder” tv show, Holly Jackson was an executive producer but there were still certain scenes and aspects of the book that didn’t make the cut. In some cases, the authors sign over the rights to the script to the producers.
As an avid reader, I love to hear that some of my favorite books are coming to the big screen and seeing a visual representation of my favorite stories. However, I’ve come to realize that there will never be a perfect book-to-movie adaptation. There will always be things that could have been done differently but it’s still cool to see these books in visual format.
