6 Answers2026-07-29
One of my favorite short stories of all time is ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ by Edgar Allan Poe. There have been so many film adaptations of this short story over the years, including a great version by Roger Corman with Vincent Price in the 1960s, and more recently a Netflix series by Mike Flanagan. The short story is a masterpiece of gothic horror that creates a great atmosphere of madness and decay and of a house literally falling down. Most film adaptations fail to capture the density of Poe’s words and try to recreate the mood of the story, with the main objective of inducing dread, of portraying decay, and of announcing doom. The series by Flanagan is a very loose adaptation, using the title and the themes of the short story to create a modern horror series.
4 Answers2025-07-12
The books of Egan Library have been well adapted to the big screen in a few cases. While The Goldfinch screen adaptation left many book fans dissatisfied, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a beautiful film that combines humor and heart just as the novel did. A film adaptation of Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad is being made as a series, and could be fantastic. There has been talk of a Secret History film for years and it would make Tartt fans incredibly happy. These novels have the depth to be great screen stories.
10 Answers2026-06-16
I watched the film before I had the chance to read the novel and absolutely adored the film. Once I did read the novel however, I felt that the film had only touched the surface of the actual story. The novel was so much more than I had initially anticipated and the movie is akin to a beautiful sketch whilst the novel is the full, complete painting with so many more layers, a far richer and deeper story and characters. For people who have only had the chance to watch the film – do yourself a favor and read the novel – it is a far more challenging but in the end a far more rewarding read. The characters are multi-layered and their spiritual journey far more in depth and 'real' as well as being more 'historical' and gritty.
Actually, reading the movie as a first gateway to the book was perfect. The movie sketched out the broad strokes and the emotional arc of the story. Then the book filled out the rest of the details in a breathtaking and impressive depth. The movie was a great starting point for me, and I am now happily referring to the book as one of my all-time favorites. That should be the ideal for all adaptations – serve as a gateway to the full and detailed source material.
6 Answers2025-08-06
I had forgotten that this project was stuck in development hell. I believe Warner Bros. optioned the rights in 2015, and that there was a screenwriter at one point or another. However, there has been no real development on the project in years. By Hollywood standards, this means that either the option has expired or the studio has lost interest. In recent years, the market for YA sci-fi film adaptations has cooled somewhat following the underperformance of ‘The Divergent Series’.
It’s a real shame, though. The visuals for this were going to look amazing. But translating a “dossier” type of story into film would be extremely challenging. You’d have to choose to do it in a found-footage style, or have characters address the reader and include written text on screen, which would be really tricky to pull off for a studio. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet is probably because there’s no clear and marketable take on how to do it, which is why it’s stalled after all this time. I’d check the authors’ social media from time to time for updates, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
10 Answers2025-08-06
Honestly, I have no idea. I read ‘West with Giraffes’ by Lydia Millet for a book club I’m a part of about two years ago and it was wonderful. We all loved it and I seem to remember someone asking about a movie adaptation, but our facilitator said she hadn’t heard of anything. Of course, two years is a long time in Hollywood and perhaps someone picked up the book on holiday last month and is currently brainstorming the big screen version.
This is the kind of movie that would do well in awards season, or as a holiday release. It’s a true story set in the Depression, but it’s a hopeful journey that ends well. It would make a great cozy Christmas movie. So while I have no evidence that there is a West with Giraffes movie in the works, I do have evidence that the book is fantastic and that it is moving in that direction. Perhaps we should all start tweeting #WestWithGiraffesMovie to get the attention of the right people.
10 Answers2025-04-22
What is remarkable about this adaptation is the difference between the plot of the film and the story of the novel. On the surface the film has all the right elements: a detective, a cold case, a personal connection, an investigation, a solution. But in missing the main part of the story of the novel – the slow dissolution of the detective’s reality as he descends into the depths of his own erosion, haunted by the past, suspicious of memory – it has made a film of the plot of the novel. Yes, there is an adaptation here, but it is an adaptation of the events of the novel, not of the essence of the novel.
3 Answers2026-03-28
I would like to see ‘Dragonfall Book 3’ made into a movie, however I fear that there would be trouble in getting all of the story and plot together within a 2 hour film. The second book is pretty intense and I fear that all of it could not be captured in a film without rushing through some of the parts.
It would work as a two-part movie or even as a series, like Harry Potter was split into movies. The dragons would have to be brilliant though. Since House of the Dragon set the bar so high, I hope they’d want to do it justice too. Bring it on either way!
7 Answers2025-04-27
Just wanted to mention “The Hiding Place”. This novel by Corrie ten Boom and her daughter is an amazing autobiographical work of a family’s efforts to hide Jews in Holland during WWII and their subsequent sojourn in a concentration camp and their experience of and response to their faith through all of it. The movie made of this novel in the 1970s is also excellent – a powerful, straightforward, amazing movie of great virtue.
The movie captures well the hardships Corrie endured and her many moments of peace and inspiration including the little trouble-making fleas in the barracks where she was being held. A great adaptation of a book of incredible true events of extreme hardship and radical faith and an excellent film for those of younger years or those that can’t get into books!
10 Answers2025-08-02
Adapting spicy books into films is a tricky job and often the best ones aren’t 100% faithful to the original material. In order to translate the core emotions of the story into another medium (i.e. visual), sometimes characters have to be combined or locations/plot points have to change in order to get the same feeling. Also, the internal monologue of the original story doesn’t always translate well. I remember the film adaptation of The Hating Game took the office setting of the original and streamlined it in order to really make the chemistry between the two leads work. And The Space Between Us was one of the worst adapts of a ‘spicy book’ because it tried to include ALL of the original plot points and therefore lacked the soul of the book. The very spice that people loved about the book was lost in translation.
3 Answers2025-09-06
Nothing (widely released, anyway) yet. My mental list of favorite novels to make into movies continues to evolve and About Grace remains on the list. This novel is quietly complex, moody, and above all highly character-orientated, which is exactly why it will never be reduced to a film. I love these kinds of novels to read in silence with my notebook by my side. Occasionally there are wonderful scenes and sequences but ultimately it is a dense, complex novel that will inspire many conversations about it in a reading group and makes for a wonderful, short, indie film rather than a mainstream movie.
For now, adaptations of other literary works would have to do to feed your taste for the kind of introspective, atmospheric screen time About Grace offers. You could also just read the book yourself – preferably slowly, and maybe even aloud to another person. You can also set up a Google Alert for ‘About Grace adaptation’ and check IMDb from time to time for any news of a project; sometimes such information surfaces in the smallest of notices, like a casting announcement or a mention of a film playing at a festival. Maybe one day a thoughtful filmmaker will make a decent adaptation of the novel. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.