# Hardest books to make into movies?



## Alpha72 (May 9, 2012)

What do you think would be the hardest book to make into a movie?


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## FH (Jul 30, 2012)

I'm going to take a punt and say 50 shades of grey because its already been optioned.

The problem of taking a book that is erotic and turning it into a mainstream film is it sits in that awkward place between porn and mainstream.

For one thing despite its notoriety getting mainstream actors & actresses to take parts will be difficult if they make the sex scenes too explicit, but then if they cast porn stars it won't get a mainstream following, while people can read the book discretely actually seeing these things into visual art form makes it voyeuristic.

I'm not sure the huge sales will translate into a box office hit, the story smacks of a late night TV erotica job and despite the huge buzz around it i don't think it has the literary credibility to be accepted as anything other than what it is.


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## Alpha72 (May 9, 2012)

martinfreddyhansen said:


> I'm going to take a punt and say 50 shades of grey because its already been optioned.
> 
> The problem of taking a book that is erotic and turning it into a mainstream film is it sits in that awkward place between porn and mainstream.
> 
> ...


I totally didn't think of this one, but you're absolutely right. The book is explicitly about sex. If they try to make it into even an R-Rated movie, I think it would be likely to fail. They might be able to get away with NC-17, though I don't know how many women would feel comfortable going then. Fascinating point.


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## Ben Nitschke (Jun 1, 2012)

I'm going to say Dune. If you look at the attempts already made, they all lost a lot from the book. I'm imagining a lot of it is due to internal dialog and the feelings of the characters not easily being translated to the screen.


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## raychensmith (Jul 11, 2012)

I agree with Dune.  Anything that's going to be SUPER budget and a lot of introspective musings would be hard to do.  I used to think long, complex stories would be hard, but after LA Confidential, I've changed my mind.  Just about any story can be made simpler.

Mega-budget stories that deal with unsavory topics would also be difficult.  Again, I'm going to bring up The Alienist, which is about a serial killer killing little boy prostitutes in late 19th-century New York.  I can't imagine a mainstream production company touching that with a ten-foot pole, and since it would create such a massive budget to do it justice, no small company can make it.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Ben Nitschke said:


> I'm going to say Dune. If you look at the attempts already made, they all lost a lot from the book. I'm imagining a lot of it is due to internal dialog and the feelings of the characters not easily being translated to the screen.


The 1984 movie was pretty awful, yes, but I don't think David Lynch's heart was really in it ... he only directed it so that the studio would let him make _Blue Velvet_. No idea what the new film is like, I haven't seen it yet. But the TV version of one of the Dune novels was not at all bad.

Actually, it's pretty difficult to be sure what will make a good movie and what will not. I never thought that Milan Kundera's _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ would translate at all well onto the big screen, and yet the final product -- with Daniel Day-Lewis -- was superb.


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## aecardenas (Dec 16, 2011)

Two books that would be incredibly hard to adapt to a movie:

1.) _A Confederacy of Dunces_ by John Kennedy Toole. Mainly because you need to find an actor capable of pulling of the larger than life character of Ignatius Reilly (a fat, perverse Don Quixote obsessed with medieval philosophy, filling his Big Chief notebooks with his invective against modern society) without coming across as caricature.

2.) _The Stars My Destination_ (aka _Tyger! Tyger!_) by Alfred Bester. This would work best as an HBO miniseries or something. The book is just too huge in scope and filled with so many ideas, all of which is framed within a Count of Monte Cristo-like dramatic vendetta by one of the most startling characters in science fiction literature--Gully Foyle. The actor playing this guy would have to bring to life a wounded animal of a man, raging against the universe and everyone in it, loathsome and savage, but utterly intractable and compelling. "I kill you filthy!"


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## Not Here (May 23, 2011)

I'd say anything with a lot of internal dialog. I just can't see how it would work in movie format. It would be too boring.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Alpha72 said:


> I totally didn't think of this one, but you're absolutely right. The book is explicitly about sex. If they try to make it into even an R-Rated movie, I think it would be likely to fail. They might be able to get away with NC-17, though I don't know how many women would feel comfortable going then. Fascinating point.


Fifty Shades of Grey is going to be a huge problem. What makes it popular as a book is the ability to read it in private. Are women going to fill up public movie theaters to watch super graphic sex? History says no. But who knows what the future holds?

In other hard to adapt books, I'd go with Atlas Shrugged. Not only is the book long, but there's a sixty page speech in it. That being said, there was a nearly straight to dvd attempt to adapt the book last year. It currently sits unrented in my local video store.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Anything with intelligent humour would be a pretty stiff challenge for the industry. Lowest common denominator and all that.


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## Borislava Borissova (Sep 9, 2011)

Any book of Paulo Coelho and also some classics, in many cases I do not like movies based on Dostoevsky or Bulgakov manuscripts.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Bethany B. said:


> I'd say anything with a lot of internal dialog. I just can't see how it would work in movie format. It would be too boring.


Yeah, I was going to say books that spend a lot of time in the character's head and/or character driven books. Movies work best with plot driven books, in my opinion.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Simon Haynes said:


> Anything with intelligent humour would be a pretty stiff challenge for the industry. Lowest common denominator and all that.


Wonder Boys was done really well. Same with High Fidelity. Even the dark humor at the beginning of Fight Club before things get bloody.

As much as Hollywood gets pegged as the industry of low hanging fruit, look at the Kindle Top 100. No humor there, dumb or otherwise.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

aecardenas said:


> Two books that would be incredibly hard to adapt to a movie:
> 
> 1.) _A Confederacy of Dunces_ by John Kennedy Toole. Mainly because you need to find an actor capable of pulling of the larger than life character of Ignatius Reilly (a fat, perverse Don Quixote obsessed with medieval philosophy, filling his Big Chief notebooks with his invective against modern society) without coming across as caricature.


If anyone could do it, it would most probably be Philip Seymour Hoffman.


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## Martin OHearn (Feb 9, 2012)

Ira Levin's _A Kiss before Dying_ would be impossible to adapt as a movie and get the full force of the plot twist upon which the midsection hangs.

It's been made into a movie twice; the plot twist was left out.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Outlander. I shudder already.


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## Lorijo Metz (Jul 20, 2012)

Dune, by Frank Herbert, never did work as a movie. Too serious and too much inner dialogue. Somehow it worked in the book, but seemed hokey no matter what they did with it on screen.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

There isn't, and probably never will be, a decent movie version of _The Pickwick Papers_. It's completely impossible. Not enough plot and cliffhangers to make into a TV series, too long and complex to make a feature-length film.

I also agree with _A Confederacy of Dunces_. Quite a few things here that no mainstream studio would touch with a 10 feet pole. But wouldn't you just loooove to see Dorian Greene on a big screen?

And there are books so unusual and extraordinary that they cannot be made into film, and cannot be shortened or simplified. Edward Patterson's The Road to Grafenwöhr comes to mind.


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## NanD (May 4, 2011)

Atunah said:


> Outlander. I shudder already.


  Yep - I see a tv mini-series


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## charlesatan (May 8, 2012)

House of Leaves.

Ulysses.

Mainly because these books work because of the sub-text.


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## mscottwriter (Nov 5, 2010)

Most of the movies based on Stephen King's books aren't very good imho.  They focus too much on the horror without capturing the richness of the characters.

I don't think 1Q84 would do very well for the same reasons.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

I just saw that Life of Pi has been made into a movie. That must have been a pain to make. Should be interesting.


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## swpubl (Nov 3, 2011)

So if they do have difficulty with getting actors for "50 shades" because of explicit sex scenes I am here to volunteer.


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## Tom S. Figueiredo (Sep 1, 2011)

_*One Hundred Years of Solitude*_ by Gabriel García Marquez.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Atunah said:


> Outlander. I shudder already.


I shudder, too. Not because _Outlander_ is unfilmable per se (if A Song of Ice and Fire could be turned into a successful TV series, then so can _Outlander_), but because I shudder what Ron D. Moore will do to it.

_50 Shades_ will probably be turned into mainstream softporn a.k.a. _Basic Instinct_ or _Secretary_, though the very same US attitudes to sexuality that made the book such a success will make filming it difficult, because a lot of US mainstream actors will not want to be seen in explicit sex scenes. A non-American adaption would probably work better, e.g. _Secret Diary of a Call Girl_, an originally anonymously published blog turned novel by a British luxury call girl, was turned into a British TV series starring ex-Doctor Who companion Billie Piper of all people and no one batted an eyelash. And _Salt on Our Skin_ by Benoit Groult, which was something of the _50 Shades_ of the late 1980s, had a film adaption in France. Even _The Story of O._ and _The 100 days of Sodom_, both of which are much more explicit than _50 Shades_ had film adaptions.

As for unfilmable books, pretty much anything by Thomas Pynchon is unfilmable. Ditto for David Foster Wallace. I don't think anybody had ever successfully filmed William Faulkner either and in fact Faulkner's attempts at screenwriting were so disastrous that no line he wrote ever ended up on screen. I'd almost have added _The Sot-Weed Factor_ by John Barth, but that book would actually make a really good HBO miniseries, if properly done. Ditto for _The Stars My Destination/Tyger, Tyger_. It might work as a good TV miniseries, but any attempt would likely be more SciFi Channel disaster than _Game of Thrones_.

And anything that relies on a very strong and unusual narrative voice would be difficult to impossible to film as well. If there is sufficient plot (e.g. _The Road_ or even _Huckleberry Finn_, which has had umpteen adaptions over the years), it can work, but the voice is almost always lost.

_Cloud Atlas_ by David Mitchell is a book I would have declared unfilmable, but apparently Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis just filmed it and the trailer even looks pretty good.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

headofwords said:


> I just saw that Life of Pi has been made into a movie. That must have been a pain to make. Should be interesting.


I see a flashback-a-palooza. Although the trailer is beautifully shot.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

I'm still waiting for Spike Jonez to direct 'Counterclock World' by Philip K. Dick.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

jasonzc said:


> I'm still waiting for Spike Jonez to direct 'Counterclock World' by Philip K. Dick.


Why didn't that many people think of making movies of Dick's books when he was still alive? There've been so many hit ones since ... poor old Philip K., he must be looking down and gnashing his teeth, wishing for a second chance.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Tony Richards said:


> Why didn't that many people think of making movies of Dick's books when he was still alive? There've been so many hit ones since ... poor old Philip K., he must be looking down and gnashing his teeth, wishing for a second chance.


No one said a prophet's life was an easy one. ; )


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

The Silmarillion by Tolkien would be one that wouldn't really transition well into a movie.  It is more an epic history than a book that takes place over many centuries and is made up of numerous smaller stories.


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Hardest? Silmarillion was hardest to read. ; )

Finnegan's Wake. Book and movie. Ever try and read that thing? I made it a few pages in. I need to try every ten years or so.


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## Aaron Scott (May 27, 2012)

Yeah, Finnegans Wake.  Though Inception gets the idea across.  I have a feeling the elusive children in that are named James and Philip(pa) after ____ Joyce and _____ K. Dick.


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## Alpha72 (May 9, 2012)

Bethany B. said:


> I'd say anything with a lot of internal dialog. I just can't see how it would work in movie format. It would be too boring.


That's a good point. It reminds me a lot of Hunger Games; I wasn't a fan because it felt like a lot of the movie was characters making random points about their world that the reader learned about through internal dialogue. For announcers to keep giving us background just felt a bit stilted (for me, anyway).


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I think I have to agree with Dune.  The books are so dense that they just don't translate to screen.


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## Math (Oct 13, 2011)

My first thought was anything with characters who have a lot of internal thoughts for dialogue/exposition. But then, my favourite show on telly is Dexter, and they do just fine with that..

IMO the hardest books are the ones that have a subtle message that a director can easily misinterpret or miss entirely.

For example, _A Clockwork Orange_'s messages about taking away free will to force change on society are completely lost by the visual impacts of the violence. It is a good example of how a reader can 'hear' a whispered message through the narrative - but a viewer has a message screamed at him through what is shown on the screen at the time.

The problem is - not _all _ good film-makers...are good readers!


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## jasonzc (Dec 23, 2011)

Neuromancer, Ubik, and possibly Snow Crash are all in production.

But I think, since they sort of ruined Atlas Shrugged, and will possibly ruin The Gunslinger series, my vote is for Cryptonomincon to be made into a movie and ruined, next.


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## CaitLondon (Oct 12, 2010)

Because of cost/budgeting, etc. anything that calls for too much real set will be a difficult sell. If graphics would serve, then anything goes w/a good studio.

BTW, I was really disappointed in The Grey (Gray?) for 2 big errors, and a French one, Tell No One for 1 error. But I liked that storyline.  As a writer, maybe we lose something as we naturally look for details and probably should just go w/the movie's flow.


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## tahliaN (Nov 6, 2011)

Anything written in first person that is character based rather than action, especially if the meaning is subtle.


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## JamesVenn (Aug 10, 2012)

I don't know if the Silmarillion would be hard to film.    The book is episodic, and it can be a tough read, but each episode's events are relatively straightforward, narratively.  You could ignore much of the background information about who was related to whom, and sort of have it be one big long historical epic, tracing the history of the elves.  Some of the scenes would even be darn exciting.    

Or maybe you could make it a mockumentary and include all the background stuff through interviews.  


Myscott9985, I agree, Stephen kings things are hard to film, mostly because his approach on horror is so interior.  Have you noticed that all of his films (Kubric's the Shining excepted) are incapable of maintaining any sense of horror at all?  I can't think of another author whose stuff has so consistently failed to translate to film and whose stuff they keep trying with.  Its like watching a kid repeatedly run into a wall.


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## Jonathan C. Gillespie (Aug 9, 2012)

JamesVenn said:


> I can't think of another author whose stuff has so consistently failed to translate to film and whose stuff they keep trying with. Its like watching a kid repeatedly run into a wall.


Dig up "The Mist", I believe from 2009. And grab the mid-90's TV adaptation of "The Stand".


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

Well I know for a fact that Jaws was a terrible film to produce because of the shark, Bruce, and his penchant for non-functionality.

Then there was Waterworld, which was from a structurally technical point, was a real pita to construct.

chris


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## ColinJ (Jun 13, 2011)

They're apparently still trying to do THE DARK TOWER.

I think it's folly, unless there are _massive_ changes made to the last half of the story to not have it become an absolute mess.


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## JamesVenn (Aug 10, 2012)

Jonathan C. Gillespie said:


> Dig up "The Mist", I believe from 2009. And grab the mid-90's TV adaptation of "The Stand".


I'll give you "the Mist". That was good. And "Carrie". I've heard good things for Misery. But on the very boring side you have "Christine", "It", "Firestarter", "Tommyknockers" "The Langoliers" "Sleepwalkers," "Graveyard Shift," "Salem's Lot" "Thinner," and definitely the the Stand"


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## Marlene Joyce Spark (Aug 6, 2012)

Alpha72 said:


> I totally didn't think of this one, but you're absolutely right. The book is explicitly about sex. If they try to make it into even an R-Rated movie, I think it would be likely to fail. They might be able to get away with NC-17, though I don't know how many women would feel comfortable going then. Fascinating point.


There's a movie in the works. The script is being written and they are working out who will play the male and female lead characters.

Sent from my GT-I9100T using Tapatalk 2


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## William Woodall (Jun 8, 2009)

Any book that focuses primarily on internal thoughts and feelings is unlikely to do very well as a movie.  Film is a visual medium, and anything which is hard to depict visually is simply not a good fit.

I've never quite understood the compulsion to turn every book into a movie (and vice versa).  Drama and novel-writing are vastly different arts.  A book is as different from a movie as a painting is from a sculpture, if not more so.  They don't convert well, and what you end up with (at best) is a derivative work which somewhat resembles the original.  It may be a good work in its own right, but it's not the same and never can be.


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## NancyHerkness (Aug 1, 2012)

I'm trying to figure out how they're going to make FIFTY SHADES OF GREY into a movie.  It doesn't strike me as a good candidate for the big screen.


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## NancyHerkness (Aug 1, 2012)

My apologies...I just noticed that the difficulties of FIFTY SHADES as a film have already been covered. And I agree with what everyone said about it.  I just can't see it.


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## FrankZubek (Aug 31, 2010)

I don't think the Dark Tower books will work because there are too many variables that its up against

I mean ....

IF they can get an unknown actor to play Roland and agree to play the role through to the end

IF they can get a good supporting cast that will ALSO be available for the run of the production

IF the studio allows the director to go all the way with his vision as well as keep the money flowing

and the biggest factor.... IF the audience is willing to see it through to the end

If all of that clicks into place it has a chance 

Still... it would be best if it stays on TV and they commit to a thirteen hour mega series and also treat it as one long story and not break it into chapters- just hours

The current plan of three films and two TV seasons is not a good plan because at any point if the audience drops they can cancel it

If they commit to a mega series it would work better

Heck, if they can make Lord of the Rings into a success, anything is possible right?


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## FrankZubek (Aug 31, 2010)

http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/did-warner-bros-just-bypass-gold-on-the-ground-by-dropping-the-dark-tower/#more-321889

Sadly, just as I figured, WB let it go
I don't understand why the producers haven't yet talked to HBO- or if they have maybe HBO passed as well

Or.... maybe the thing is just way too big ( at 8 books) for any format

For you curious... there are a string of comic books by MARVEL written by Peter David and Robin Furth and personally overseen by King himself that are extensions of the 8 books

While they ARE comic books- the story is as quality as you can get


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## Dylan Hayes (Aug 18, 2012)

It's hard to adapt novels into movies because a lot of the time, so much has to get cut out. Which might explain why _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_, _Mockingjay_ and _The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn_ would all be released in two parts.

Some books have adapted several times, but not very well. For example, it seems like every time someone tries to adapt _The Mysterious Island_, it strays far from the original story. Nowadays, would viewers even accept a faithful adaptation of a book like that if they haven't read the book?


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## Natasha Holme (May 26, 2012)

Books on flower arranging would be pretty tricky.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

NatashaHolme said:


> Books on flower arranging would be pretty tricky.


I must vehemently disagree. Compared to most movies I've seen lately, a movie about flower arranging (preferably with no dialog at all) would make a terrific change. The same goes for tea drinking. The absence of a coherent plot wouldn't bother me at all.


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